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Studies  in  Social  Science 

No.  2- 

Edited  by  WILLIAM  I.  THOMAS 


The  Rise  and  Progress 
of  Democracy 


By 

FERDINAND  SCHEVILL,  PH.  D. 

Professor  of  Modern  History  in  the 
University  of  Chicago 


Published  by 
THE  ZALAZ  CORPORATION 

CHICAGO 
Organized  for  the  Diffusion  of  General  Knowledge  and  Culture 


I  think  by  far  the  most  important  bill  in 
our  whole  code  is  that  for  the  diffusion  of 
knowledge  among  the  people. 

—THOMAS  JEFFERSON, 
Correspondence,  II.  45. 


Culture  of  civilization,  taken  in  its  wide 
ethnographic  sense,  is  that  complex  whole 
which  includes  knowledge,  belief,  art,  morals, 
law,  custom  and  any  other  capabilities  and 
habits  acquired  by  man  as  a  member  of 

society. 

-EDWARD  B.  TYLOR, 

Primitive  Culture,  I.  1. 


BRIEF  CATALOGING 
REQ.  OFSSR3 

GIFT 


Copyright  1915  by 

THE  ZALAZ  CORPORATION,  CHICAGO 
All  rights  reserved 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS 
OF  DEMOCRACY 

There  is  no  complete  agreement  about  the  use  of  the 
word  democracy.  Most  citizens  of  the  United  States, 
for  example,  are  prepared  to  affirm  that  they  are  mem- 
bers of  the  greatest  democracy  on  earth  and  that  the 
European  countries,  although  involved  in  a  varying  de- 
gree of  democratic  transformation,  lag  far  behind  them- 
selves. Many  Europeans,  however,  deny  that  the  United 
States  is  anything  but  superficially  democratic  and  con- 
fidently assert  that  more  truly  democratic  conditions  pre- 
vail in  certain  regions  of  the  old  continent.  The  di- 
vergence of  opinion  is  explained  by  the  different  meaning 
attached  to  the  word  and  idea  in  question.  Americans  are 
inclined  to  think  of  democracy  as  an  exclusively  political 
creed,  while  Europeans,  at  least  of  a  certain  advanced 
type,  think  of  democracy  in  a  more  purely  social  sense. 
In  this  paper  we  shall  interpret  the  word,  in  order  to 
meet  all  exigencies,  as  broadly  as  possible  and  consider  it 
as  signifying  the  movement  on  the  part  of  the  people  of 
the  civilized  world  to  take  the  control  of  their  political, 
social,  economic  and  all  other  interests  whatsoever  out  of 
the  hands  of  a  class  or  group  of  classes  in  order  to  assume 
the  control  themselves.  Our  purpose  will  be  to  trace  the 
movement  from  its  rise  in  the  eighteenth  century  down  to 
our  own  day. 


M775742 


4  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

To  begin  the  evolution  of  democracy  with  the  eight- 
eenth century  is  decidedly  arbitrary,  for  democratic  tend- 
encies may  be  noticed  in  the  earliest  times  and  sporadic 
societies  of  a  more  or  less  democratic  cast  have  existed  in 
many  a  land  and  epoch.  Athens,  for  instance,  boasted  a 
democracy  as  Rome  did  afterwards;  we  may  scoff  at  the 
variety  but  we  can  not  treat  it  as  non-existent.  Again, 
in  the  Middle  Ages  there  were  democratically  governed 
cities  everywhere  amidst  the  feudally  governed  states  of 
Europe.  But  all  these  democratic  experiments  ended  in 
fiasco  and  have  as  good  as  nothing  to  do  with  the  great 
movement  that  set  in  in  the  eighteenth  century  and,  con- 
stantly adding  new  strength,  has  poured  in  an  unbroken, 
irresistible  stream  into  the  century  which  has  just  be- 
gun. The  eighteenth  century  movement  was  amply  pre- 
pared by  the  general  conditions  matured  in  Europe  since 
the  Reformation,  but  it  saw  the  light  of  day  in  France  and 
owed  the  first  form  of  its  program  to  the  particular 
situation  in  that  country.  A  swift  review  of  eighteenth 
century  France  is  therefore  an  indispensable  preliminary  to 
our  story. 

THE    FRENCH    REVOLUTION. 

France  before  the  year  1789  was  an  absolute  monarchy, 
that  is,  the  political  power  was  exercised  by  an  hereditary 
monarch  and  his  appointed  officials.  Such  a  monarchy 
need  not  leave  the  welfare  of  the  people  out  of  considera- 
tion, but  the  danger  that  it  will  do  so  is  always  great  and 
in  France  the  danger  had  become  an  overwhelming  real- 
ity: the  French  monarchy  existed  only  for  itself.  But  it 
did  consent  to  share  the  exploitation  of  the  people  with 
two  classes  which  stood  particularly  close  to  the  throne 


THE  RISE  AJSTD  PROGRESS  OP  DEMOCRACY  5 

and  had  accumulated  a  vast  number  of  special  privileges, 
the  clergy  and  the  nobility.  These  were  therefore  called 
the  privileged  orders,  and  quite  naturally,  after  the  law 
of  selfish  flesh,  came  to  look  upon  themselves  as  divinely 
selected  to  be  an  ornament  to  society  and  to  feed  upon 
their  fellows.  But  meanwhile  a  new  class  had  arisen  in- 
clined to  challenge  that  convenient  view.  The  new  class 
was  made  up  of  those  whom  the  French  call  the  bour- 
geoisie, that  is,  the  merchants,  bankers,  manufacturers, 
lawyers,  and  physicians,  who  congregated  in  towns  and 
owed  their  existence  to  production  and  exchange  and  to 
professional  service.  The  trade  opportunities  opened  by 
the  New  World  had  increased  their  wealth  and  numbers 
and,  conscious  of  their  growing  strength,  they  became 
more  and  more  exasperated  with  the  financially  oppres- 
sive government  of  the  king  and  his  numerous  ornamental 
parasites.  Out  of  their  discontent,  doubtless  economic 
in  its  origin,  there  developed  a  general  and  sweeping 
criticism  which  strove  more  and  more  to  get  at  funda- 
mental principles  and  ended  with  an  investigation  of  the 
nature  of  the  state  and  the  rights  and  duties  of  its  cit- 
izens. Voltaire  and  Rousseau — to  mention  only  the 
best  known  leaders  of  the  bourgeoisie — magnificently 
illustrate  the  trend  of  the  new  ideas.  Voltaire  declared 
in  denunciatory  pamphlet  or  keenly  satirical  squib  that 
every  institution  inherited  from  the  past,  the  monarchy, 
the  church,  the  feudal  privileges,  and  the  law-courts 
would  have  to  be  reformed  in  order  to  bring  them  into 
harmony  with  the  interests  of  the  bourgeoisie;  and  Rous- 
seau went  even  further  and  declared  in  fanatic,  unequiv- 
ocal terms  that  the  slate  would  have  to  be  wiped 


6  STUDIES  IN  SOCIALr  SCIENCE 

clean  and  a  brand-new  society  erected  on  the  ruins  of 
the  old  in  accordance  with  the  eternal  principles  of 
liberty,  equality,  and  brotherhood.  These  ringing  preach- 
ments supplemented  by  the  pipings  of  a  hundred  lesser 
voices  brought  the  sense  of  conditions  unworthy  of  the 
dignity  of  man  to  the  attention  of  the  general  public  and 
prepared  an  irresistible  movement  of  protest.  It  was  in 
the  year  1789  that  the  accumulated  criticism  reached  its 
flood-point  and,  bursting  the  dykes,  in  a  surprisingly  short 
time  swept  the  institutional  landmarks  of  France  into 
oblivion. 

With  the  victory  won  over  king  and  privileged  classes 
the  French  people  took  up  the  work  of  reconstruction. 
The  bourgeoisie  or,  as  we  would  say  in  America,  the 
middle  classes,  first  tried  their  hand  at  the  game,  but 
the  patch- work  which  they  had  in  mind  was  not  to  the 
liking  of  the  masses  and  was  swiftly  sent  overboard  to- 
gether with  its  sponsors.  The  confused  period  which 
followed  and  during  which  the  liberated  masses  took 
fierce  vengeance  on  their  former  leaders  is  usually  called 
the  Reign  of  Terror.  The  Reign  of  Terror,  in  spite  of 
its  sinister  name,  was  not  merely  or  even  primarily  a  mas- 
sacre; it  was  an  honest  attempt  to  realize  the  republic 
of  freedom  and  equality,  though  it  led  to  as  overwhelm- 
ing a  failure  as  has  ever  been  recorded.  For  one  reason  or 
another  the  leaders,  instead  of  building  up  a  new  society, 
succeeded  only  in  spreading  fear  and  undermining  con- 
fidence with  the  result  that  every  gracious  hope  of 
an  earthly  paradise  yielded  presently  to  the  iron  necessity 
of  re-establishing  order.  The  country,  tired  of  chaos, 
clamored  for  its  man  of  destiny,  its  savior  on  horseback, 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  7 

and  in  the  year  1799  this  miraculous  being  appeared  in 
the  person  of  the  brilliant  and  successful  young  general, 
Napoleon  Bonaparte.  Bonaparte,  as  the  world  knows, 
followed  a  personal,  not  a  revolutionary  course.  What 
cared  he  for  the  bourgeoisie  and  its  program  of  political 
control?  What  cared  he  for  the  people  and  their  con- 
fused dream  of  liberty  and  equality?  He  satisfied  the 
prevailing  clamor  for  security  of  life  and  property — so 
much  must  readily  be  conceded — but  having  popularized 
himself  with  this  achievement  he  turned  his  attention 
to  the  engrossing  and  titanic  program  of  conquering 
Europe  by  armed  force.  We  all  know  his  military 
triumps;  we  also  know  his  failure  and  his  overthrow. 
When  in  1815  victorious  Europe  sat  in  judgment  on  the 
fallen  conqueror,  it  not  only  condemned  him  to  perpetual 
exile  on  the  island  of  St.  Helena  but  it  also  seized  the 
occasion  to  declare  that  the  whole  democratic  idealism 
with  which  the  French  revolution  began  was  a  delusion 
and  a  snare  and  that  safety  lay  only  with  the  old-fash- 
ioned, pre-revolutionary  system  of  monarchy.  Thus  the 
first  great  experiment  undertaken  in  Europe  to  realize  a 
democracy  ended  or  seemed  to  end  in  total  failure. 

THE  AMERICAN   REVOLUTION. 

An  attempt  made  at  the  same  time  to  establish  a 
democracy  in  distant  America  was  crowned  with  suc- 
cess. Essentially  the  reason  for  the  happier  outcome  in 
the  west  is  to  be  found  in  the  simpler  living  condi- 
tions which  prevailed  in  the  new  continent.  The  rebels 
of  the  thirteen  colonies  may  be  looked  upon  as  prac- 
tically a  community  of  free  and  independent  farmers 
and  when  in  1776  they  renounced  the  government  of  the 


8  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

king  of  England  they  became  without  more  ado  and  cer- 
tainly without  the  accompaniment  of  a  vast  body  of  re- 
form legislation  a  free,  self-governing  republic.  The 
slavery  of  the  southern  states  was,  it  is  true,  a  dangerous 
anomaly  in  a  community  professing  to  be  free,  but  for  a 
time  at  least  the  slavery  difficulty,  being  localized,  could 
be  overlooked.  Owing  to  the  boundless,  unoccupied 
wilderness  to  the  west  and  the  attendant  opportunity 
offered  to  every  man,  woman,  and  child  to  earn  a  com- 
petency with  the  labor  of  his  hands  an  economic  condition 
was  created  that  came  as  near  to  guaranteeing  human 
freedom  as  has  ever  been  the  case  in  the  history  of  the 
world.  The  United  States  have  therefore  from  the  start 
been  in  a  different  situation  from  Europe  in  the  matter 
of  democracy.  Having  begun  their  existence  with  a  basic 
economic  and  political  equality,  they  have  been  chiefly 
concerned  with  safe-guarding  their  precious  heritage 
against  infringement,  while  Europe,  characterized  by 
enormous  inequalities  among  individuals  and  classes  in- 
herited from  the  feudal  age,  has  striven  toward  demo- 
cracy as  toward  a  distant  and  invisible  goal.  Our  story 
of  the  rise  of  modern  democracy  is  therefore  chiefly  laid 
in  Europe  and  only  from  time  to  time  shall  we  turn  to 
America  in  order  to  define  its  place  in  the  recent  develop- 
ments of  the  movement. 

THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION. 

The  failure  of  the  first  great  democratic  experiment, 
although  announced  by  the  allied  victors  over  Napoleon  to 
be  complete,  was  more  apparent  than  real.  Small  groups 
of  enthusiasts  continued  to  nurse  the  revolutionary  ideas 
and  the  middle  classes,  on  whose  economic  and  intellectual 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY      9 

emergence  the  whole  movement  depended,  remained  as 
prominent  as  ever.  Nay,  they  steadily  became  more  prom- 
inent, for  after  1815  the  economic  movement  set  in  with 
increasing  energy  and  by  piling  up  the  resources  of  the 
middle  classes  has  ended  by  giving  them  the  unquestioned 
control  of  society.  That  economic  movement  is  usually 
called  the  Industrial  Revolution  and  it  deserves  the  clos- 
est attention  as  the  most  basic  fact  of  nineteenth  century 
history  and  as  the  real  explanation  of  the  persistence  and 
vigor  of  the  democratic  program. 

The  Industrial  Revolution  is  the  most  recent  stage  of 
the  ancient  struggle  of  man  with  nature  for  the  purpose 
of  reducing  the  world  and  its  forces  to  his  service.  It  is 
therefore  an  integral  part  of  a  story  as  old  as  life  but  it 
had  its  immediate  origin  in  the  scientific  advances  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries.  By  discoveries  in 
the  realm  of  physics  and  chemistry  new  forces  and  their 
laws  were  revealed  and  led  to  the  idea  of  utilizing  them 
for  the  practical  purposes  of  industry.  Experiments  and 
inventions  followed  that  concerned  themselves  in  the  first 
place  chiefly  with  the  spinning  and  weaving  of  cloth. 
Improved  appliances  like  Hargreaves's  spinning  jenny  and 
Cartwright's  power  loom  made  possible  a  greatly  in- 
creased production  of  both  cotton  and  woolen  goods.  As 
the  new  machinery  was  largely  of  iron  and  very  heavy 
the  idea  occurred  of  working  it  not  by  hand  but  by  steam, 
the  expansive  energy  of  which  had  been  the  subject  of 
much  recent  experimentation.  The  result  was  the  steam 
engine  of  James  Watt.  Of  course  the  first  models  of 
looms,  engines,  boilers  and  so  forth  were  all  primitive 
and  full  of  flaws,  but  the  initiative  once  taken,  man  in  his 


10  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

tireless  way  never  rested  until  he  had  carried  his  handi- 
work from  improvement  to  improvement  to  the  perfected 
and  innumerable  machines  and  engines  of  today. 

THE    INDUSTRIAL    REVOLUTION   IN    ENGLAND. 

It  was  in  eighteenth  century  England  that  the  Age  of 
Machinery  based  on  discovery  and  invention  saw  the  light 
of  day  and  it  was  naturally  in  England  that  the  good  and 
evil  of  the  new  system  first  revealed  themselves.  To  begin 
with  there  took  place  an  immediate  conquest  by  England 
of  the  markets  of  the  world.  With  her  improved  ma- 
chinery worked  by  steam  power  she  was  enabled  to  turn 
out  more  articles  at  a  smaller  cost  and  thereby  success- 
fully to  undersell  every  other  nation  at  home  and  abroad. 
As  the  movement  crystallized  just  as  the  continent  was 
being  engulfed  in  the  turmoil  of  the  French  Revolution 
a  policy  of  vigorous  imitation  was  out  of  the  question  and 
England  got  off  to  a  flying  start  which  carried  her  so  far 
ahead  of  her  competitors  that  she  has  never  been  over- 
taken. The  profits  of  the  new  industry  were  largely  mo- 
nopolized by  the  middle  classes  whose  numbers  waxed 
from  year  to  year  and  whose  influence  in  the  nation  be- 
came steadily  more  decisive.  Inevitably  this  growing 
wealth  would  lead  before  long  to  the  demand  for  a  larger 
political  role  than  had  thus  far  been  conceded  by  the 
gentleman  class  in  control  of  the  government. 

The  industrial  ascendancy  of  England  was  no  sooner 
established  than  a  score  and  more  of  forces  appeared  so 
disruptive  of  all  that  the  past  had  handed  down  and  so 
quick  to  mould  new  conditions  that  the  country  was 
taken  by  surprise  and  in  effect  has  failed  to  this  day  to 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  11 

bring  its  thought-processes  abreast  with  the  rapid  and 
radical  transformation  of  its  life.  Let  me  attempt  to 
enumerate  some  of  the  elements  of  social  change.  The 
machines  with  their  engines  required  a  huge  initial  cost 
which  could  not  be  met  by  the  individual  craftsmen 
who  had  thus  far  earned  their  living,  each  with  his 
small  kit  of  personally  owned  tools.  Moreover,  the  ma- 
chines had  to  be  installed  in  spacious  factories  to  which 
the  workmen  who  had  hitherto  lived  scattered  over  the 
town  and  countryside  were  invited  to  resort.  All 
these  preliminary  expenses  had  to  be  met  by  men  with 
considerable  fluid  means,  with  liquid  capital,  and  these 
men  naturally  became  masters  of  the  situation  paying 
what  wages  they  pleased  and  exacting  as  many  hours  of 
labor  as  they  could.  An  economic  oppression,  which  in 
this  first  phase  was  terrible  and  unlimited,  was  the  natural 
result.  The  dazed  workmen  harnessed  to  their  unfamiliar 
machines  vaguely  felt  that  there  was  something  wrong 
but  were  too  scattered,  lowly,  and  unschooled  to  devise 
an  immediate  remedy.  In  addition  to  a  cruel  wage- 
slavery  the  factory  carried  in  its  wake  a  horde  of  other 
evils.  Factory  employes  had  to  give  up  their  pleasant 
little  cottages  in  the  suburbs  and  outskirts  and  at  the 
bidding  of  a  clanking  and  puffing  monster  to  uproot  them- 
selves in  order  to  take  up  their  residence  in  its  black 
shadow.  Tenements  sprang  up  like  poisonous  toadstools 
and  swarmed  with  unkempt  and  famished  women  and 
children.  Small  towns  and  even  agricultural  villages 
suddenly  found  themselves  inundated  with  immigrants 
come  to  seek  employment  and  their  population  grew  so 
fast  that  it  got  quite  out  of  hand.  Men  were  not  pre- 


12  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

pared  for  the  new  development  and  either  from  thought- 
lessness or  despair  for  a  long  time  let  matters  go  as  they 
would.  We  in  America  are  perfectly  familiar  with  all  the 
heaped-up  consequences  and  problems  of  the  movement  for 
they  overwhelmed  us  in  our  turn  when  toward  the  middle 
of  the  nineteenth  century  we  inaugurated  our  own  indus- 
trial revolution.  Dirty,  malodorous,  and  ill-lighted  streets, 
imperfect  sewage,  frequent  illness  due  to  insufficient  nu- 
trition, epidemics  with  their  huge  death-toll,  drunken- 
ness, unemployment,  and  crime — such  were  some  of  the 
social  and  civic  effects  of  the  new  system  in  England  and 
in  every  other  country  which,  when  the  hour  struck, 
followed  in  England's  footsteps. 

MIDDLE    CLASS   HUMANITARIANISM. 

It  is  perhaps  excusable  that  society  at  first  did  as  good 
as  nothing  to  remedy  the  appalling  conditions  in  the  man- 
ufacturing towns  among  the  working  masses.  But  even 
the  employers,  piously  praising  God  for  their  waxing 
profits,  could  not  forever  shut  their  eyes  to  the  curse 
wrought  by  themselves  and  their  inventions.  In  the  first 
place  they  were  threatened  in  their  own  health  and  se- 
curity by  the  disease-and-murder-breeding  slums  in  their 
midst.  Street-lighting,  sanitation,  in  a  word,  a  general 
municipal  amelioration  policy  got  slowly  under  way,  and 
at  the  same  time  some  of  the  well-to-do,  bursting  their 
class-bounds,  developed  a  social  sense  and  gave  their  at- 
tention to  the  redemption  of  their  crushed  and  unfortu- 
nate fellow-citizens.  This  humanitarian  sentiment  by 
castigating  the  egotism  of  the  middle  classes  and  arousing 
them  to  a  perception  of  their  own  risks  from  an  underfed 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  13 

and  desperate  proletariat  has  been  chiefly  responsible  for 
the  gradual  enactment  by  the  rulers  themselves  of  legis- 
lative measures  looking  forward  to  the  removal  of  at 
least  some  of  the  most  flagrant  evils  resulting  from  the 
slums  and  tenements. 

WORKING   CLASS   TRADE    UNIONS. 

Middle  class  writers,  responding  to  a  natural  tendency 
to  extoll  the  virtues  of  the  group  to  which  they  belong, 
also  ascribe  an  enormous  role  to  the  humanitarian  senti- 
ment of  their  class  in  effecting  a  rise  of  wages  and  a  re- 
duction of  the  hours  of  labor.  Doubtless  they  exaggerate; 
at  any  rate  that  is  what  most  workingmen  declare  who 
proudly  boast  that  they  owe  every  improvement,  not  purely 
municipal  and  social,  to  their  own  initiative  and  to  that 
alone.  In  the  opinion  of  these  men  it  was  because,  taken 
by  surprise  by  the  Industrial  Revolution,  the  laborers 
played  an  entirely  passive  role  that  the  enslavement,  which 
wage-earning  in  its  first  stage  meant,  was  imposed  on 
them.  And  the  liberation,  they  unanimously  declare, 
dates  from  the  day  when  casting  about  for  means  to  cur- 
tail the  oppression,  they  made  up  their  minds  to  organize. 
Without  belittling  the  humanitarian  sentiment  and  the 
social  improvement  which  it  undoubtedly  helped  effect, 
it  must  be  clear  in  the  mind  of  every  objective  student 
that  the  first  substantial  check  sustained  by  the  capitalist 
in  his  economic  mastery  of  the  situation  came  on  the  day 
when  he  dealt  not  with  individual  workingmen,  but  with 
a  marshalled  army  under  leaders.  And  if  proof  be  needed 
it  is  supplied  by  the  resistance  of  the  middle  classes  to 
the  associations  or  trade-unions  of  the  workers.  They 


14  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

indignantly  denounced  this  natural  and  honorable  move- 
ment of  self-help  as  something  wicked  and  even  revolu- 
tionary and  brought  the  machinery  of  the  law  into  action 
in  order  to  stigmatize  it  as  illegal  and  to  break  it  up  by 
force.  It  took  a  generation  of  stubborn  fighting  before 
the  resistance  of  the  British  Parliament  was  even  partially 
overcome  and  the  trade-unions  legalized  by  a  general 
statute.  From  that  moment,  however,  that  is,  from  the 
first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  capital  and  labor 
began  to  wage  their  historic  battle  on  somewhat  more 
equal  terms  and  the  next  one  hundred  years  were  destined 
to  see  a  very  important  improvement  in  the  position  of 
the  wage-earners  without,  however,  shaking  the  effective 
domination  of  the  capitalists. 

THE   INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION    IN    FRANCE. 

Such  was  the  Industrial  Revolution  and  such  were 
some  of  its  problems  when  it  first  established  itself  in  the 
land  of  its  birth,  in  England.  The  great  victory  it  won 
for  English  goods  in  the  markets  of  the  world  would 
have  precipitated  an  immediate  imitation  on  the  continent, 
if,  as  already  pointed  out,  Europe  had  not  just  then  been 
economicaly  paralyzed  by  the  wars  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution. Not  till  the  overthrow  of  Napoleon  in  1815  was 
a  condition  established  that  enabled  the  harrassed  countries 
to  look  about  and  undertake  measures  calculated  to  equal- 
ize the  contest  with  England  for  the  possession  of  the 
industrial  profits.  And  even  then  it  was  only  France 
that  had  advanced  sufficiently  to  install  the  English  ma- 
chines and  embark  on  the  capitalist  system.  Accordingly, 
in  the  course  of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  15 

France  went  through  the  same  transformation  as  had  just 
been  effected  in  England  and  was  confronted  in  its  turn 
with  all  the  developments  and  problems  which  we  have 
just  sketched.  Needless,  therefore,  to  review  the  eco- 
nomic situation  under  the  restored  Bourbon  monarchy  of 
Louis  XVIII  (1815-24),  Charles  X  (1824-30),  and 
Louis  Philip  (1830-48).  The  one  thing  to  note  is  a 
very  original  intellectual  contribution  made  by  France  to 
the  solution  of  the  war  of  capital  and  labor.  In  the  face 
of  the  hardships  and  sufferings  of  the  working  classes 
France,  in  close  imitation  of  England,  experienced  a 
growth  of  the  philanthropic  sense  among  the  middle 
classes,  together  with  the  self-assertion  of  the  workers 
expressed  in  the  creation  of  trade-unions.  But  some- 
thing radical  and  thorough-going  in  the  French  genius 
obliged  the  native  thinkers  to  pry  beneath  superficial 
phenomena,  and  to  aim  at  not  remedial  measures  merely 
but  at  a  genuine  and  complete  cure  of  the  evils  at- 
tending the  reign  of  the  machine.  Reflection  along  these 
lines  gradually  led  some  advanced  philosophers  to  de- 
clare the  private  ownership  of  capital  to  be  the  root  of 
the  trouble  and  to  advocate  a  nationalization  of  the  means 
of  production  in  order  to  insure  an  equal  distribution  of 
material  benefits  among  the  whole  citizen  body.  Naturally 
a  good  deal  of  this  thinking  was  very  crude  but  as  in- 
augurating the  radical  and  genuinely  revolutionary  move- 
ment of  the  nineteenth  century  uncompromisingly  opposed 
to  the  continued  domination  of  the  middle  classes  it  can 
not  be  ignored.  St.  Simon  is  perhaps  the  most  important 
pioneer  in  this  field.  He  was,  however,  a  closet-philoso- 
pher and  never  reached  any  but  a  narrow  drawing-room 


16  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

audience.  It  was  Louis  Blanc  (chiefly  active  before  1848) 
who  first  carried  the  new  radicalism  into  public  life.  He 
held  that  the  only  way  to  effect  the  overthrow  of  capital 
was  by  the  direct  action  and  revolt  of  the  workingmen  and 
for  this  reason  he  carried  his  agitation  down  into  their 
circles.  Blessed  with  grandiloquent  speech  and  a  not  in- 
considerable organizing  talent  he  brought  about  the  first 
union  of  workingmen  with  the  avowed  object  of  a  social 
revolution  to  be  conducted  in  the  name  of  equality  and 
justice  and  to  be  crowned  with  the  confiscation  of  private 
capital  for  the  benefit  of  the  community  at  large.  Of 
course  the  doctrine  was  so  new  and  startling  that  not 
many  of  the  workingmen  were  converted  to  it  and  the 
rest,  in  so  far  as  they  leaned  to  the  democratic  faith  at 
all,  preferred  to  remain  loyal  to  the  notion  of  a  purely 
political  republic  inherited  from  the  French  Revolution. 
Nonetheless  Louis  Blanc  started  a  movement  in  French 
life  that  has  continued  with  ups  and  downs  to  our  own 
day  and  that  as  early  as  the  year  1848  was  already  strong 
enough  to  play  a  considerable  role  in  the  uprising  which 
buried  the  monarchy  of  the  Bourbons  and  inaugurated 
the  socalled  Second  Republic  (1848-51). 

THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  GERMANY. 

With  the  industrial  current  in  the  ascendancy  in  Eng- 
land and  France  it  was  certain  that  the  other  European 
countries  would  yield  to  it  as  soon  as  the  conditions  with- 
in their  borders  permitted.  To  take  the  case  of  Ger- 
many— the  German  people  were  morally  and  education- 
ally sufficiently  advanced  to  fall  in  behind  their  western 
neighbors,  but  unfortunately  their  political  disorganiza- 
tion was  such  that  a  strong  and  general  industrial  move- 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  17 

ment  was  out  of  the  question.  Prussia,  the  soundest  of 
the  states  composing  the  German  body,  busied  itself  with 
clearing  the  ground  and  between  1815  and  1840  suc- 
ceeded in  forming  a  German  customs-union  or  Zollverein, 
which  converted  Germany  into  a  single  area  for  economic 
purposes.  By  this  wise  measure  the  evils  of  political  dis- 
union were  partially  overcome  and  the  ground  cleared  for 
the  entrance  of  Germany  into  the  industrial  race.  How- 
ever, the  German  movement  did  not  pass  out  of  its 
swaddling-clothes  till  well  after  the  middle  of  the  century. 

THE    POLITICAL   VICTORY   OF    THE    MIDDLE    CLASS   IN 
ENGLAND,  FRANCE  AND  GERMANY. 

While  this  vast  economic  transformation  of  Europe  was 
under  way,  not  particularly  noticed  by  the  world  and  de- 
cidedly not  estimated  at  its  proper  value,  certain  move- 
ments occurred  in  the  noisy  realm  of  politics  -which  were 
probably  overestimated  at  the  time  but  which  nonetheless 
hold  a  sufficiently  important  place  in  the  evolution  of  de- 
mocracy to  cause  us  at  this  point  to  give  them  our  attention. 
Starting  with  1815,  when  the  old  monarchies  beat  down 
Napoleon  and  the  Revolution,  a  consistent  reign  of  con- 
servatism reestablished  itself  in  Europe.  An  hereditary 
king  pretty  much  everywhere  maintained  a  more  or  less 
autocratic  government  and  looked  for  support  to  the  two 
feudal  classes,  the  clergy  and  nobility.  True,  the  rise  of 
a  trading  class  had  modified  this  system  so  far  as  England 
was  concerned,  as  early  as  the  seventeenth  century  (Crom- 
well and  the  Puritan  revolution)  and  had  secured  a  place 
in  parliament  and  the  administration  to  the  great  city 
merchants.  In  France  this  same  class  was  largely  instru- 


18  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

mental  in  staging  the  French  Revolution.  Therefore, 
it  will  hardly  do  to  affirm  catagorically  that  the  middle 
class  did  not  bestir  itself  in  politics  before  the  nineteenth 
century.  Nonetheless  an  overwhelming  accession  of 
strength  came  to  it  only  with  the  advent  of  the  Industrial 
Revolution,  and  thus  it  follows  that  the  capitalist  group 
could  not  step  into  the  political  arena  with  the  plan  of  con- 
quering the  government  until  the  expansion  of  manu- 
factures had  supplied  a  certain  prospect  of  success.  Now 
from  the  economic  evolution  we  have  traced  we  have 
every  reason  to  expect  that  the  middle  class  in  England 
would  be  the  first  among  the  middle  classes  of  Europe  to 
enter  politics;  and  such  indeed  is  the  case.  The  aristo- 
cratic landowners  had,  as  already  stated,  wisely  admittted 
the  great  merchants  to  a  share  in  the  government  as  early 
as  the  seventeenth  century,  but  the  sudden  enlargement, 
before  and  after  the  year  1800,  of  the  beneficiaries  of  the 
industrial  system  produced  a  considerable  body  of  new- 
comers who  represented  tremendous  and  growing  interests 
and  would  under  no  circumstances  consent  any  longer  to 
hide  their  light  under  a  bushel.  Their  agitation  became 
clamorous  from  1815  on,  and  after  resisting  it  for  a 
generation  the  privileged  rulers  suddenly  gave  way  and 
widened  the  franchise  in  such  a  manner  as  to  grant  repre- 
sentation in  parliament  to  the  middle  class  in  the  broad 
industrial  sense  of  that  word.  It  was  the  Reform  Bill 
of  1832  that  carried  through  the  above  important  modi- 
fication of  the  English  constitution  and  government.  The 
nobility,  basing  their  power  on  land,  by  no  means  re- 
signed their  authority  but  they  consented  to  exercise  it 
henceforth  in  co-operation  with  the  whole  extensive  middle 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  19 

class,  basing  its  power  on  trade  and  industry.  With  this 
gaping  breach  made  in  the  defenses  of  the  aristocratic 
system  the  middle  class  was  sure  to  march  from  victory 
to  victory  until  it  planted  its  banner  on  every  bastion. 
The  whole  course  of  English  history  in  the  ninteenth 
century  corroborates  this  view. 

Contemporaneously  with  the  rise  of  the  English  middle 
class  into  prominence,  the  French  middle  class  projected 
itself  into  politics.  In  July,  1830,  Charles  X.,  represent- 
ing the  older  branch  of  the  house  of  Bourbon,  was  driven 
into  exile  and  the  throne  offered  to  his  cousin,  head  of  the 
younger  line,  Louis  Philip.  The  July  revolution  was 
essentially  a  middle  class  action  and  Louis  Philip  seized 
the  reins  with  the  conscious  purpose  of  sustaining  this 
group  among  his  subjects.  The  French  expressively  call 
him  le  roi-bourgeols,  the  king  of  the  bourgeoisie.  But 
Louis  Philip  interpreted  his  task  a  bit  too  narrowly  and 
ended  by  arousing  considerable  discontent  among  the 
journalists,  shopkeepers  and  other  minor  hangers-on  of 
capitalism  who  by  combining  with  the  working  people 
were  able  to  imperil  his  throne.  Finding  the  self-in- 
fatuated king  set  on  favoring  merely  the  big  money-in- 
terests his  enemies  at  last  rose  against  him  and  drove 
him  into  flight.  The  event  occured  in  1848  and  led  to 
the  proclamation  of  a  republic.  The  republic  for  a  time 
— a  very  short  time —  maintained  universal  suffrage  and 
seemed  ready  and  eager  to  inaugurate  a  government  by 
and  for  the  people,  but  the  hopes  it  raised  were  premature 
and  were  extinguished  like  a  guttering!  candle  when  in 
1851  a  nephew  of  the  great  Napoleon  seized  the  govern- 
ment, styling  himself  Emperor  Napoleon  III.  In 


20  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

spite  of  his  autocratic  tone,  Napoleon  III.  leaned  es- 
sentially upon  the  middle  classes  and  enables  us  to  assert 
that  in  France  as  well  as  in  England,  regardless  of  the 
form  of  government,  the  agents  of  the  new  industrialism 
jumped  into  a  position  very  much  akin  to  control  from 
the  moment  they  insisted  on  political  recognition.  The 
fact  that  France  in  the  course  of  the  century  changed 
several  times  from  a  monarchy  to  a  republic  and  back 
again  does  not  in  the  least  modify  the  assertion;  the 
bourgeoisie,  promoters  of  the  new  industrial  wealth,  had 
regularly,  as  a  preliminary  to  all  else,  to  be  met  and 
"squared,"  whether  the  head  of  the  state  was  a  monarch 
or  a  president. 

The  economic  emergence  of  the  middle  class  in  Ger- 
many came,  as  already  stated,  a  little  later  than  in  France. 
Having  with  the  Zollverein  solved  the  problem  of  a 
single  customs  area,  Germany  had  next  to  effect  her 
political  unification.  She  made  a  spirited  effort  to  do 
so  in  1848  but  failed.  She  returned  to  the  attack  in  the 
sixties  under  the  leadership  of  Bismarck  and  scored  a 
brilliant  success  culminating  in  the  proclamation  of  the 
German  empire  in  1871.  But  she  owed  this  achievement 
at  best  to  the  co-operation  of  the  middle  classes,  not  to 
their  exclusive  initiative.  It  was  Bismarck,  after  all,  that 
made  the  German  empire — Bismarck  utilizing  the  govern- 
ment and  army  of  Prussia.  The  result  was  that  when 
the  German  constitution  was  elaborated  (1867-71)  a 
large  place  had  to  be  conceded  to  traditional  forces,  to 
the  monarchy  and  country  gentry,  and  that  the  urban 
middle  class  had  to  content  itself  with  a  seat  at  the  side 
of  the  older  political  authorities.  Nonetheless,  in  Ger- 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  21 

many,  too,  the  statement  holds  that  the  middle  class  has 
proved  a  steadily  growing  factor  in  the  public  life  of  the 
nation. 

SUMMARY  OF  MIDDLE  CLASS  SUCCESS. 

Pausing  a  moment  to  glance  back  over  the  path  we  have 
traveled,  it  is  forced  on  our  attention  that  the  question 
of  democracy  in  the  period  with  which  we  are  here  con- 
cerned has  been  indeed  a  political  issue,  but  far  more  con- 
spicuously, an  economic  one.  It  entered  upon  its  present 
familiar  phase  with  the  Industrial  Revolution  of  the 
second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  in  consequence 
appeared  first  in  England,  and  later  in  France,  Germany, 
and  the  other  European  countries.  In  every  country  the 
rise  of  factories  concentrated  the  economic  power  in  the 
hands  of  the  capitalists  and  their  allies,  whom  together 
we  designate  as  the  middle  classes,  and  in  every  country 
it  produced  a  political  movement  on  the  part  of  these 
classes  to  possess  themselves  of  the  government.  Either 
by  concessions  wrung  from  the  rulers  or  by  open  re- 
volt against  them  the  ambitious  program  was  realized 
but  with  a  varying  degree  of  completeness  depending  on 
the  resistance  offered  by  the  older  social  groups  such  as 
the  clergy  and  nobility.  In  France,  where  the  feudal 
orders  had  had  the  economic  props  knocked  from  under 
them  by  the  revolution  of  1789,  the  victory  of  the  bour- 
geoisie was  doubtless  most  complete;  respectfully  en- 
treated under  Louis  Philip  and  Napoleon  III,  it  became 
absolutely  preponderant  in  the  Third  Republic  founded 
in  1870,  maintaining  an  unquestioned  control  of  the 
government  down  to  our  own  day.  In  England  and 
Germany,  on  the  other  hand,  the  old  orders  were  strong 


22  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

enough  to  insist  on  recognition  and  they  have  with- 
out interruption  remained  important  factors  in  the  politi- 
cal systems  of  their  respective  countries.  Although  the 
nineteenth  century  has  often  been  hailed  as  the  age  of 
democracy  it  might  much  more  properly  be  called  the  age 
of  the  middle  classes,  but  there  is  hardly  need  of  saying 
that  the  dethroning  or  partial  dethroning  of  the  older 
orders  and  the  admission  of  the  middle  class  to  political 
rights  was  decidedly  a  movement  in  a  democratic  direc- 
tion. However,  democracy  in  the  amplest  sense  of  the 
word  can  not  be  said  to  have  been  achieved  as  long  as  the 
political  and  economic  emancipation  of  the  great  masses  of 
the  working  people  has  not  been  effected,  and  to  this  end 
an  agitation  set  in  as  soon  as  the  Industrial  Revolution 
was  well  under  way  which  gradually  produced  some  im- 
portant ameliorations  in  the  workingmen's  lot.  In  the 
first  place  the  middle  class  itself  slowly  became  reconciled 
to  certain  concessions  such  as  the  legalization  of  trade- 
unions,  universal  suffrage,  freedom  *  of  the  press,  trial 
by  jury — concessions  that  came  the  easier  in  as  much  as 
many  of  them  were  also  demands  of  the  middle  class  put 
forward  in  the  course  of  its  struggle  against  the  nobles  and 
the  church — and  second,  the  growing  ranks  of  organized 
labor  were  enabled  to  wring  a  vast  body  of  protective 
legislation  from  the  various  bourgeois  parliaments.  This 
labor  legislation,  which  has  piled  statute  upon  statute,  is 
an  important  regulative  feature  in  the  relations  of  capital 
and  labor  in  all  modern  countries. 

In  the  writer's  view  the  latest  phase  in  the  develop- 
ment of  democracy  is  best  illustrated  first,  by  examining 
the  most  recent  phase  of  the  struggle  of  labor  against 
capital,  and  second,  by  attempting  to  define  the  current 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  23 

political  and  economic  status  of  the  workers  in  three  such 
leading  countries  as  England,  the  United  States  and 
Germany. 

THE  MOST  RECENT  PHASE  OF  THE  STRUGGLE  OF 
LABOR  AGAINST  CAPITAL 

I  have  already  called  attention  to  the  formation  of 
trade-unions  in  England  in  the  early  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  After  they  had  won  legal  recognition 
and  were  no  longer  persecuted  they  gave  their  chief  at- 
tention to  effecting  wage-agreements  with  their  employers 
and  to  putting  through  legislation  reducing  the  hours 
of  labor,  protecting  the  women  and  children,  introduc- 
ing safety  devices  and  so  forth — a  mass  of  often  in- 
finitesimal, but  in  their  bulk,  very  appreciable,  ameliora- 
tions in  the  lot  of  the  wage-earner,  servant  and  slave 
of  the  machine.  In  England  the  course  of  labor  has  con- 
tinued down  to  our  own  day  to  travel  this  slow  upward 
path  characterized  by  concessions  and  compromise,  though 
of  late  years  the  continued  fair-weather  prospect  has  been 
troubled  by  the  more  radical  agitation  imported  from  the 
continent.  To  this  I  shall  now  invite  the  reader's  atten- 
tion. I  have  already  spoken  of  St.  Simon  and  Louis 
Blanc  and  the  rise  of  a  socialist  doctrine  in  France.  Its 
gist  was  the  abolition  of  private  property  and  the  nation- 
alization of  the  means  of  production  and  although  it  did 
not  call  itself  socialism  at  first,  the  name  of  socialism  be- 
came attached  to  it  and  has  remained  attached  to  all  simi- 
lar philosophies  to  the  present  day. 

The  socialism  which  was  destined  to  gather  the  greatest 
number  under  its  banner  was  born  in  Germany  toward 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  found  its  first 


24  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

utterance  in  the  socalled  Communist  Manifesto  of  Karl 
Marx  and  Friedrich  Engels.  The  decisive  point  about 
that  proclamation  (1848)  was  that  it  declared  the  capi- 
talist system  had  superseded  the  older  feudal  system  by 
virtue  of  a  necessary  historical  process  and  that  the  capi- 
talist system  would  in  its  turn  be  superseded  by  the 
socialist  system  by  virtue  of  the  same  ineluctable  force. 
The  appeal  to  history  gave  to  the  new  propaganda  a 
cold,  scientific  character  and  served  to  establish  the  con- 
viction that  it  was  the  part  of  reason  to  work  for  the 
success  of  Socialism  since  in  doing  so  one  merely  took  one's 
stand  with  Nature  and  Nature's  sacred  instrument,  the 
law  of  Evolution.  Of  course  the  Communist  Manifesto 
endorsed  all  the  political  rights  for  which  the  middle  class 
had  been  contending  and  which  they  had  by  no  means 
as  yet  entirely  achieved — universal  suffrage,  religious  tol- 
eration, freedom  of  the  press  and  of  association — but  it 
insisted  that  the  proletariat  would  by  reason  of  their  num- 
bers soon  swamp  the  bourgeoisie  and  that  then  an  eco- 
nomic revolution  would  be  carried  through,  by  law  and 
not  by  violence,  which  would  distribute  the  total  harvest 
of  labor  in  equal  shares  among  all  those  engaged  in  the 
various  processes  of  production.  These  German  founders 
insisted  also  from  the  first  that  the  movement  concerned 
the  workers  not  in  their  country  merely  but  the  world 
over,  and  that  it  must  consequently  take  on  an  inter- 
national character.  When  therefore,  after  a  period  of 
incubation,  a  Marxist  party,  calling  itself  officially 
the  Social-democratic  party  of  Germany,  was  formed 
(1875),  it  Was  presently  supplemented  by  Social-demo- 
cratic parties  established  in  every  other  country  of  Europe ; 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  25 

and  all  of  them  got  into  touch  with  one  another  by  means 
of  periodic  international  congresses  and  a  permanent  ex- 
ecutive bureau  located  at  Brussels.  The  hope  of  some 
enthusiasts  that  the  international  organization  would  prove 
itself  strong  enough  to  dominate  the  various  national  gov- 
ernments has  shown  itself  repeatedly  to  be  a  delusion  and 
never  more  completely  so  that  in  the  great  war-crisis  of 
the  summer  of  1914  when  Internationalism  fell  over  like 
a  house  of  cards;  but  the  various  national  organizations 
have  nonetheless  vigorously  projected  themselves  into 
politics,  especially  during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century, 
and  have  confidently  asserted  that  their  assumption  of  the 
bourgeois  heritage  and  of  the  governments  of  the  world  is 
not  far  distant. 

In  turning  now  to  examine  the  present  economic  status 
of  the  working  masses  in  certain  leading  countries,  I 
would  guard  against  misunderstanding.  It  is  my  belief — 
and  I  shall  give  expression  to  it — that  the  improvements, 
limited  though  they  be,  which  characterize  the  present 
situation,  represent  the  hard-won  triumphs  of  the  working- 
men  themselves  and  must  in  a  measure  at  least  be  ascribed 
to  the  Social-democratic  propaganda  since  the  social- 
democratic  party  has  been  the  stoutest  and  most  consistent 
champion  of  the  cause  of  labor.  But  I  am  of  course  quite 
ready  to  admit  that  a  large  number  of  other  agents  have 
contributed  to  the  result.  Many  workmen,  for  instance, 
although  remaining  totally  indifferent  to  the  social  phil- 
osophy of  Marx  and  Engels,  have  nevertheless  not  failed 
in  eager  agitation  for  ameliorative  laws,  and  many  middle 
class  groups,  especially  the  intellectual  leaders,  have  been 
tirelessly  active  to  eliminate  evils  and  to  build  up  a  suf- 


26  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

ferable  and  human  atmosphere  around  the  factory.  Civil- 
ized society,  as  the  socialists  aver,  may  be  an  affair  of 
rival  classes  and  the  history  of  civilization  a  perpetual 
struggle  among  them,  but  a  given  national  group  is  also  a 
homogeneous  sum  of  many  social  integers  and  an  improve- 
ment in  the  position  of  one  class  as  soon  as  made  is  likely 
to  be  woven  into  the  general  national  consciousness.  This 
is  worth  emphasizing  in  order  that  we  do  not  fall  into 
the  error  of  making  so  much  of  class  strife  and  class  di- 
visions that  we  forget  the  remarkable  cohesion  of  states  and 
nations  secured  by  a  common  language,  institutions,  man- 
ners, and  ideas. 

THE    PRESENT    SITUATION    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES. 

Our  own  country  represents  in  many  respects  a  special 
case  and  the  evolutionary  formula  of  Europe  is  not  ap- 
plicable to  it.  The  reason  lies  in  the  particular  economic 
situation  in  the  United  States.  We  have  here  a  land 
of  vast  area,  magnificant  resources,  and  sparse  population. 
We  began  our  life  as  a  full-fledged  democracy,  not  as 
foolish  flatterers  would  have  us  think  because  of  the  in- 
herently noble  disposition  of  our  ancestors,  but  because  of 
the  favorable  ratio  between  population  and  free  land. 
Our  young  democracy  of  1776  and  of  the  following  gen- 
erations demanded  only  freedom,  that  is,  the  right  for 
each  individual  to  appropriate  as  much  of  the  unclaimed 
wilderness  as  his  hands  could  tame  to  his  use.  This  pro- 
duced the  pioneer  spirit,  the  greatest  moral  asset  in  our 
history.  American  democracy  was  not  in  the  least  con- 
cerned with  equality  in  any  economic  sense,  although  a 
sort  of  rough  equality  was  for  a  long  time  secured  by 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OP  DEMOCRACY  27 

the  mere  fact  that  the  unclaimed  lands  were  endless  and 
were  guaranteed  by  the  government  in  limited,  fixed 
quantity  to  any  one  who  chose  to  acquire  a  title  by 
settling  on  them.  Until  1850  we  were  substantially  a 
democracy  of  farmers  cultivating  a  healthy  out-of-doors 
individualism  and  blessed  with  an  approximate  equality 
of  possessions  and  income. 

About  1850  the  Industrial  Revolution  struck  us,  start- 
ing in  the  east  and  north  and  moving  gradually  west. 
For  the  next  few  decades  the  glorious  American  pioneer 
spirit  celebrated  greater  triumphs  than  ever  before  in  ap- 
propriating coal  and  iron  deposits,  building  mills  and 
factories,  crisscrossing  the  land  with  railroads,  and  in 
importing  a  proletariat  of  wage-earners  from  the  over- 
crowded countries  of  Europe.  Of  course,  following  an 
irresistible  law,  the  political  control  passed  into  the  hands 
of  the  new  capitalist  or  middle  class,  but  such  considerable 
numbers  shared  in  the  returns  and  the  wages  paid  the 
workers  remained  so  ample  that  the  country,  fairly  wal- 
lowing in  prosperity,  was  for  a  long  time  absolutely  blind 
to  its  transformation.  The  political  guarantees  of  the  bal- 
lot, free  speech,  and  free  association  were — except  in  spor- 
adic instances — not  withdrawn  and  helped  maintain  the 
illusion  that  the  government  was  by  and  for  the  people. 
Not  till  the  end  of  the  century  did  the  truth  begin  to 
dawn  upon  the  public.  The  country  was  visibly  run 
by  bosses  who  were  known  to  be  corrupt  and  who,  in 
spite  of  protest,  could  not  be  shaken  off.  Why?  An 
even  superficial  investigation1  sufficed  to  show  that  these 
bosses  were  only  the  agents  of  the  capitalists  who  pre- 
ferred not  to  appear  but  who  were  set  on  managing  the 


28  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

country  in  their  class  interest.  The  connection  of 
"crooked  politics  and  crooked  business"  stood  suddenly 
revealed  and  a  vigorous  agitation  set  in  which  has  lasted 
to  our  own  day  and  which  fixed  as  its  object  the  termina- 
tion, as  it  was  called,  of  "this  unholy  partnership." 

As  I  am  writing  this  article  (April,  1915)  there  is 
going  on  in  Syracuse,  New  York,  a  libel  suit  of  Mr. 
Barnes,  a  Republican  boss,  against  ex-President  Roose- 
velt, the  Progressive  leader,  which  has  brought  to  light 
such  illuminative  material  on  class  control  that  I  am 
tempted  to  quote  from  it.  It  was  in  1898,  after  the 
Spanish  war,  that  Mr.  Roosevelt  began  his  national  career 
by  coming  forward  as  candidate  for  governor  of  the  state 
of  New  York.  As  a  necessary  preliminary  he  opened  up 
round-about  negotiations  with  Platt,  the  Republican  boss 
and  agent  of  the  money-kings  of  Wall  street,  and  present- 
ly received  this  letter  from  Platt's  secretary:  "I  told 
him  (Platt)  that  you  would  like  to  be  nominated;  that 
you  understood  perfectly  that  if  you  were  nominated  it 
would  be  as  a  result  of  his  support;  that  you  were  not 
the  sort  of  a  man  who  would  accept  a  nomination  direct- 
ly out  of  the  hands  of  the  organization  without  realizing 

the    obligation    thereby    assumed I    said 

that  you  would  adopt  no  line  of  policy  and  agree  to  no 
important  matter  or  nomination  without  previous  con- 
sultation." Mr.  Roosevelt  accepted  these  terms  (with 
certain  mental  reservations)  and  entered  upon  his  famous 
career  as  the  personally  honest  agent  of  a  corrupt  boss 
and  soon,  in  measure  as  his  reach  expanded,  of  a  whole 
bench  of  bosses.  In  the  following  years  he  made  the  hair- 
raising  discovery  that  the  wicked  bosses  were  the  tools  of 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  29 

the  still  more  wicked  manipulators  of  "big  business"  and 
on  this  discovery  based  his  clamorous  preachment  of  reform 
founding  at  last  the  Progressive  party  for  the  express 
purpose  of  overthrowing  the  enemies  of  the  public  weal. 
The  Progressive  party  marks  an  interesting  awakening 
of  the  American  people  to  capitalist  control  but  it  is,  his- 
torically speaking,  a  party  rather  of  reactionary  than  of 
forward-looking  tendencies,  for  it  upholds  a  program  in- 
spired by  the  old  American  freedom  of  the  days  of  un- 
limited material  resources  and  naively  believes  that 
"ideas"  and  "morality,"  if  made  sufficiently  common  coin, 
will  secure  the  elections  and  the  government  to  the  people 
and  drive  the  shamed  capitalists  into  a  modest,  philo- 
sophic, and  self-erasive  obscurity.  Everything  considered, 
the  most  notable  thing  about  the  Progressive  party  is  that 
it  ignores  the  fact  that  democracy  (with  which  nonethe- 
less it  boasts  to  be  wed  in  Siamese  inseparableness)  is 
primarily  an  economic  issue,  and  from  this  strange  blind- 
ness it  follows  that,  though  fervidly  denouncing  capital 
as  the  source  of  political  corruption,  it  proposes  to  con- 
serve the  capitalist  system  after  effecting  the  "reform" 
of  the  individual  capitalist  through  the  descent  of  the 
Holy  Ghost. 

A  small  group  of  social-democratic  critics  laughs  at 
such  "reform"  and  upholds  the  faith  of  its  European  fel- 
low-workers to  the  effect  that  democracy  is  primarily  an 
economic  issue  and  that  it  will  be  realized  only  by  the 
total  overthrow  of  the  middle  class  regime.  But  these 
critics  are  as  yet  no  considerable  factor  in  the  realm  of 
practical  politics.  The  average  American  continues  to 
disport  himself  as  a  convinced  individualist  but  the  rea- 


30  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

son  for  his  stand,  though  he  does  not  admit  it,  is  mainly 
economic.  In  spite  of  the  trusts  with  their  cumulative 
appropriation  of  our  natural  resources  for  the  benefit  of  a 
limited  group,  in  spite  of  our  growing  proletariat  and  its 
increasing  misery  and  restlessness,  we  are  not  yet  at  the 
end  of  our  unrivalled  wealth  and  consequently  a  majority 
of  our  people  prefers  the  system  of  free  competition  with 
its  prospect  of  a  luxurious  return  for  every  expended 
effort  to  a  restrictive  and  cooperative  system  with  its 
meager  ideal  of  rations  for  everybody.  America  for 
many  years  to  come  will  in  all  likelihood  continue  to  be 
democratic  in  the  generous  sense  of  its  traditions,  that  is, 
it  will  be  content  with  political  and  legal  equality  coupled 
with  the  right  of  every  individual  to  make  as  good  a  liv- 
ing as  he  can.  The  fly  in  the  ointment  will  be  the  grow- 
ing knowledge  that  the  vaunted  political  rights  are  set  at 
naught  by  secret  class  rule  and  that  the  shrinkage  of 
economic  opportunity  goes  on  apace  through  the  octopus 
activity  of  capital.  Till  the  day  of  realization  we  shall 
go.on  boasting  of  the  democracy  we've  got,  a  magnificent 
democracy  in  the  light  of  its  achievements  but  already 
undermined  on  its  economic  and  moral  sides.  Above  all, 
we  should  guard  against  judging  and  condemning  Europe 
by  the  standards  of  our  free  competitive  system.  For 
crowded  Europe  neither  was  nor  is  comparable  with  us 
in  the  matter  of  material  possibilities  and  under  pressure 
of  necessity  has  ante-dated  us  in  interpreting  democracy 
economically.  In  one  sense  at  least  Europe,  in  such  ad- 
vanced societies  as  Great  Britain  and  Germany,  is  there- 
fore more  democratic  than  we  are,  but  that  need  not 
hinder  us  from  being  proud  of  the  democracy  we  have, 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  31 

provided  we  recognize  its  virtues  and  its  drawbacks  and 
modestly  remain  aware  that  our  chief  advantage  over  the 
little  trans-Atlantic  continent  lies  in  the  more  bounteous 
reward  which  the  generous  mother-heart  of  our  country 
pours  out  to  the  individual  as  a  return  for  his  exertions. 

THE  PRESENT  SITUATION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN. 

I  have  already  pointed  out  that  till  the  Reform  Bill 
of  1832  Great  Britain  was  politically  in  the  hands  of  its 
land-holding  gentry  and  great  merchants.  The  age  of 
machinery  won  a  first  victory  for  its  middle  class  bene- 
ficiaries by  virtue  of  the  act  just  named  and  inspired  this 
group  to  try  for  nothing  less  than  complete  political  con- 
trol. Its  program  constituting  the  great  creed  of  nine- 
teenth century  Liberalism  included  all  the  well-known 
liberties,  such  as  religious  toleration,  freedom  of  speech, 
of  the  press  and  of  association,  and  a  wider  and  wider 
extension  of  the  suffrage.  An  enormous  legislation  has 
accumulated  along  these  lines  in  the  eighty  years  since 
1832  and  the  liberal  program  has  been  so  completely  real- 
ized that  only  a  few  details  remain  to  be  added,  for  in- 
stance, in  the  matter  of  the  suffrage.  The  suffrage  in 
Great  Britain  was  twice  extended  after  1832,  in  the  Re- 
form Bills  of  1867  and  1884,  but  a  residence  and  prop- 
erty qualification  persists  and  the  radical  demand  of  uni- 
versal suffrage  still  remains  to  be  realized.  Such  tiny 
imperfections,  however,  can  not  disguise  the  fact  that 
Great  Britain  has  achieved  middle  class  rule,  achieved 
it  in  fact  with  a  completeness  that  leaves  every  other 
country,  with  the  possible  exception  of  France,  in  the  shade 
and  puts  the  British  government  hors  concours  as  an  ex- 
pression of  middle  class  ideals.  It  is  noteworthy  that  this 


32  STUDIES  IN   SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

success  was  won  against  the  landed  gentry  but  not  at  the 
price  of  its  destruction.  The  gentry,  not  without  terrible 
heart-burnings  to  be  sure,  has  gradually  adjusted  itself  to 
the  situation  and  in  return  for  its  submission  has  been  left 
in  possession  of  its  enormous  social  prestige  and  been  ad- 
mitted to  a  share  in  the  money-profits  of  capitalism.  The 
continued  existence  of  the  English  aristocracy  and  its 
tenure  of  most  of  the  high  administrative  posts  in  the 
army,  navy,  diplomatic  and  colonial  services,  has  blinded 
us  to  the  important  fact  that,  economically  speaking,  this 
ancient  order  has  been  absorbed  by  the  middle  class,  for 
although  it  still  lives  upon  the  land  and  maintains  mag- 
nificent estates  for  ornamental  purposes,  it  no  longer  lives 
by  the  land  like  the  farmers  of  the  United  States  or  the 
peasants  and  gentry  of  Germany.  The  British  gentry's 
interest-earning  investments  have  been  gradually  trans- 
ferred to  industry  and  commerce,  and  therefore  in  spite  of 
the  social  contempt  it  may  feel  and  express  for  "people 
in  trade,"  it  is  bound  to  those  same  people  by  the  wire- 
cables  of  an  absolutely  identical  economic  interest.  Oc- 
cassional  revolts  of  the  nobility  caused  by  the  unforgotten 
dream  of  power  have  been  speedily  suppressed.  The  last 
action,  still  in  everybody's  mind,  befell  in  the  first  decade 
of  the  twentieth  century  and  ended  in  the  partial  destruc- 
tion of  the  house  of  Lords  by  the  cancellation  of  its  veto 
power.  The  more  we  look  into  the  situation  the  more 
we  are  obliged  to  agree  that  in  the  British  parliamentary 
system  the  middle  class  has  perfected  a  tool  admirably 
responsive  to  the  mental,  moral,  and  economic  purposes 
of  the  group. 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  33 

However,  unlimited  as  middle  class  control  came  to  be, 
the  novi  homines  had  to  face  the  grave  question  which 
kept  exact  pace  with  their  own  development,  the  question 
of  the  working  masses.  I  have  previously  pointed  out 
that  their  first  attitude  was  one  of  sharp  hostility  ex- 
pressing itself  in  a  refusal  to  grant  the  barest  legal  rec- 
ognition to  the  trade-unions.  When  these  had  won  an 
acknowledged  standing,  British  liberalism  with  the  aid  of 
them,  and  in  the  fond  hope  of  winning  their  political  sup- 
port, undertook  to  formulate  its  labor  program,  which 
bore  a  humanitarian  character  and  took  account  of  the 
need  of  protecting  the  wage-earners  against  the  too  ruth- 
less exploitation  of  the  employers.  The  British  factory 
legislation,  involving  hours  of  labor,  sanitation,  protection 
against  dangerous  machines  and  a  score  of  other  matters, 
has  grown  to  the  size  of  many  folio  volumes  and  without 
any  question  has  made  the  position  of  the  worker  of  the 
twentieth  century  very  much  more  secure  than  that  of 
his  ancestor  a  hundred  years  earlier.  But  neither  the  hu- 
manitarian legislation  nor  the  various  liberties  of  creed, 
press,  and  meeting  conceded  by  the  liberal  regime  have 
altered  the  fact  that  the  middle  class  is  in  the  saddle  while 
the  industrial  masses  go  or  crawl  afoot.  The  insularity 
of  Britain  may  serve  to  explain  why  the  British  workers 
were  slow  to  awaken  to  the  shortcomings  of  the  situa- 
tion. Nonetheless  they  did  awaken,  and  toward  the  end 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  refusing  further  to  commit 
their  interests  to  political  parties  identified  with  the  middle 
class,  they  formed  their  own  party,  called  the  Labor 
Party,  and  more  or  less  bound  up  with  the  Social-demo- 
cratic movement  of  the  continent. 


34  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

The  moment  this  stage  had  been  reached  the  middle 
class  rulers  were  obliged  to  make  a  very  radical  con- 
cession. They  had  hitherto  confidently  maintained  that 
they  were  the  heaven-sent  furtherers  of  democracy  and 
that  their  brand  of  democracy,  a  democracy  of  political 
rights,  would  of  itself  bring  about  the  salvation  of  the 
world;  they  were  now  forced  by  the  secession  of  the 
Labor  Party  to  concede  that  democracy  had  also  an  econo- 
mic side  and  that  the  state  would  have  to  modify  its  in- 
dividualism in  order  to  secure  some  positive  material  bene- 
fits to  the  working  masses.  It  was  in  the  first  decade  of 
the  twentieth  century  that  the  Liberal  Party  announced 
its  conversion  to  the  new  views  and  proceeded  to  put 
through  its  famous  Insurance  Laws,  involving  insurance 
against  accident,  illness,  old  age,  and  unemployment. 
They  were  copied  in  the  main  from  Germany,  where  they 
had  been  enforced  some  twenty  years  earlier,  and  need 
not  be  discussed  here  further  than  to  emphasize  that  they 
mark  a  new  era.  With  them  middle  class  individualism 
of  the  old  type  has  been  dealt  a  severe  blow  and  the  state 
has  assumed  the  position  that  it  is  wholly  within  its  scope 
to  secure  to  the  workers  a  portion  of  their  wrongfully 
withheld  wages  by  means  of  coercive  legislation.  As  a 
final  result  democracy  in  Great  Britain  now  begins  to  de- 
fine itself  as  an  economic  issue  in  more  or  less  exact  con- 
formity with  the  demand  and  prophecy  of  the  socialists. 

THE   PRESENT    SITUATION   IN    GERMANY. 

With  regard  to  Germany,  we  have  noted  that  the  In- 
dustrial Revolution  did  not  put  in  an  appearance  till  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  industrial  en- 
terprises sprang  up  like  rank  weeds  and  the  consequent 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OP  DEMOCRACY  35 

growth  of  a  middle  class  inevitably  produced  a  capitalist 
political  program.  The  unification  of  Germany  was 
largely  the  work  of  the  new  order,  but  since  Bismarck, 
representing  the  monarchy  and  gentry,  was  the  architect 
of  the  edifice,  these  two  elements  secured  to  themselves 
an  important  place  at  the  side  of  the  middle*  class.  A 
comparison  of  the  governments  of  Germany  and  Great 
Britain  in  recent  times  is  interesting  and  shows  that  the 
political  development  in  Britain  has  been  far  more  un- 
compromisingly bourgeois.  In  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
the  English  gentry  finally  crowded  the  monarch  aside,  it 
took  over  his  whole  power,  reducing  him  to  a  toothless 
pensioner;  and  when  in  the  nineteenth  century  the  middle 
class  uprose  like  a  young  giant,  its  first  concern  was  to 
rob  the  aging  gentry  of  its  natural  support  by  making 
the  land  economically  worthless.  It  did  this  by  means  of 
its  free  trade  legislation  (Repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  in 
1846),  which  flooded  the  country  with  cheap  American 
wheat,  brought  about  the  abandonment  of  agriculture, 
and  obliged  the  gentry,  if  it  would  live  at  all,  to  throw  in 
its  lot  with  the  capitalists.  Great  Britain,  as  we  have 
seen,  became  the  paradise  of  the  middle  class  in  a  degree 
that  certainly  does  not  hold  for  Germany.  In  Prussia  and 
Germany  the  monarch  and  the  gentry  have  retained  their 
position  in  the  government,  the  gentry  more  particularly 
owing  to  their  stubborn  refusal  to  sacrifice  their  acres  to 
the  bourgeois  demand  for  free  trade  and  cheap  bread.  The 
Prussian  gentry,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  not  more  prominent 
in  public  ofHce  than  the  gentry  in  Great  Britain,  but  it 
stands  for  a  genuine  agricultural  interest  lacking  in  Britain 
and  it  maintains  an  economic  combat  with  the  middle  class 


36  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

which  in  the  island-kingdom  has  long  ago  come  to  an  end. 
English  middle  class  writers  (and  even  English  aristocrats 
unmindful  of  their  out-and-out  parasitism,  the  poorest  kind 
of  platform  for  a  critic)  delight  in  reproving  Germany  as 
reactionary;  that  is  another  way  of  saying  that  Germany 
still  has  land  from  which  it  draws  wealth  and  support  and 
that  the  middle  class  has  not  yet  succeeded  in  exclusively 
directing  the  government. 

If  Germany  still  sustains  a  gentry  which  is  not  purely 
ornamental  and  parasitic,  it  also  has  a  monarch  who 
isn't  a  figurehead  in  the  British  fashion.  His  power 
originating  in  Prussia  sprang  from  the  military  necessi- 
ties of  a  small  state  in  the  midst  of  more  powerful  rivals 
and  has  been  perpetuated  largely  through  the  continuance 
of  these  difficult  neighborhood  conditions  to  our  own  day. 
The  main  clue  to  the  strong  executive  in  Prussia  and 
Germany,  object  of  much  passionate  denunciation  at  the 
present  day,  is  supplied  by  an  intelligent  glance  at  the 
map  of  Europe.  But  the  instinct  for  public  security  alone 
would  not  have  kept  the  Prusso-German  sovereign  as  the 
directive  head  of  the  state  against  the  aggressive  policy 
of  German  capital  if  he  had  not  discovered  a  source  of 
strength  in  mediating  between  the  interests  of  agriculture 
and  industry  and  in  establishing  a  balance  between  them. 
And  presently  he  discovered  still  another  support  to  his 
throne  in  declaring  that  the  state,  of  which  he  was  the 
head  and  emblem,  stood  for  the  whole  community  and, 
subjected  neither  to  the  owners  of  the  soil  nor  to  the  pro- 
prietors of  the  factories,  was  profoundly  concerned  with 
the  welfare  of  a  third  great  group  of  citizens,  the  work- 
ingmen.  The  German  state  was  the  first  to  declare  that 
it  was  not  its  business  to  maintain  a  purely  passive  role  in 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  DEMOCRACY  37 

the  conflict  between  capital  and  labor,  and  this  construc- 
tive policy,  as  constructive  attitudes  always  do,  has  doubt- 
less strengthened  its  authority. 

Turning  now  to  the  German  workingmen,  we  note  again 
that  a  radical  labor  agitation  championed  by  Marx  and 
Engels  appeared  among  them  from  about  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  led  them  to  demand  in  categorical 
terms  the  overthrow  of  the  system  of  private  capital.  Their 
organization,  especially  from  the  year  1875,  when  the  So- 
cial-democratic party  was  called  into  being,  made  rapid 
headway  and  obliged  both  the  middle  class  and  the  state  to 
concern  themselves  with  its  demands.  The  German  middle 
class  acted  in  the  now  familiar  manner :  reluctantly  at  first, 
bye  and  bye  with  a  certain  humanitarian  eagerness  it 
took  up  and  passed  ameliorative  legislation,  but  it  shared 
the  political  views  of  the  liberal  democracy  the  world 
over  and  shied  away  from  radical  enonomic  measures. 
This  is  the  point  at  which  the  state  acted,  affirming  that 
economic  legislation  assuring  an  existence  to  every  mem- 
ber of  the  community  was  within  the  proper  functions  of 
society.  It  was  Bismarck  who  inaugurated  the  important 
departure  with  a  pronouncement  delivered  in  the  year 
1881  and  in  spite  of  strong  opposition  from  middle  class 
elements,  he  succeeded  in  embodying  his  views  in  a  group 
of  acts  known  as  the  Insurance  Laws.  These  were  in- 
tended to  give  the  workingman  a  reasonable  security 
against  some  of  the  worst  risks  of  his  position  arising  from 
illness,  injury  through  accident,  and  old  age  infirmities. 
They  represent  an  additional  wage-return  for  service 
rendered,  were  naturally  welcomed  by  the  workingmen, 
and  after  an  existence  of  twenty  years  may  be  safely  de- 
clared to  have  proved  no  inconsiderable  factor  in  raising 


38  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

the  material  level  of  the  German  masses.  However,  they 
have  not  in  the  least  decreased  the  Social-democratic  agi- 
tation. On  the  contrary,  the  Social-democrats  have 
preached  their  doctrine  harder  than  ever  and  with  such 
success  that  they  are  today  far  and  away  the  largest  po- 
litical party  in  the  empire.  They  are  entirely  willing  to 
accept  further  benefits  for  themselves  and  their  clients  at 
the  hands  of  the  existing  state  but  they  declare  at  the 
same  time  that  their  final  end,  which  continues  to  be 
the  abolition  or  rather  the  absorption  of  private  capital, 
can  never  be  put  through  by  any  group  or  party  except 
by  themselves.  They  therefore  hold  fast  to  their  aim  of 
conquering  the  government — a  conquest  to  be  effected  by 
the  ballot,  be  it  understood,  and  not  by  force. 

Meanwhile  the  most  remarkable  thing  about  contem- 
porary Germany  is  a  certain  balance  of  interests.  The 
owners  of  land  and  capital,  carefully  set  off  against  each 
other,  are  certainly  in  control,  but  the  recognition  on  the 
part  of  the  state  of  the  economic  rights  of  the  working- 
men  has  gone  farther  than  in  any  other  European  com- 
munity. Thus,  in  spite  of  a  palpable  and  passionate  class 
division  evidenced  in  the  press,  at  elections,  and  on  the 
floor  of  the  Reichstag,  Germany  possesses  an  economic 
energy  which  in  variety,  resourcefulness,  and  delicate 
interaction  of  its  parts  has  few  if  any  equals. 

FINAL    SUMMARY. 

Before  closing  let  us  see  what  we  have  got  as  a  result 
of  our  rapid  review  of  the  democratic  development  of 
the  last  one  hundred  years.  We  have  seen  that  democ- 
racy does  not  mean  the  same  thing  at  all  times  and  in 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OP  DEMOCRACY  3» 

every  country.  The  United  States  started  out  with  an  agri- 
cultural democracy  which  was  both  political  and  economic 
and  which  was  entirely  acceptable  till  the  Industrial 
Revolution  poured  an  inordinate  wealth  into  the  lap  of 
the  bankers,  railroad  presidents,  company  managers  and 
their  numerous  allies.  We  are  at  present  engaged  in 
combating  their  control  but  up  to  date  have  been  unwill- 
ing to  yield  our  honored  individualist  creed,  the  creed  of 
our  pioneers  and  pathfinders,  by  which  middle  class  con- 
trol is  in  the  last  analysis  secured.  Europe  having  in- 
herited from  the  Middle  Ages  a  land-holding  gentry 
(though  side  by  side  with  a  peasantry  more  or  less  inde- 
pendent) started  in  with  an  undemocratic  system  and 
envisaged  democracy  as  a  possible  development  not  till 
the  rise  of  the  commercial  and  industrial  classes,  ready 
and  eager  to  crowd  out  the  gentry.  Wherever  the  In- 
dustrial Revolution  has  triumphed  the  gentry  has  either 
wholly  or  in  part  been  overthrown  and  a  middle  class 
regime  established,  based  on  a  program  of  human  rights 
involving  equality  before  the  law,  in  opinion,  religion, 
and  the  vote.  But  the  middle  class,  through  its  wealth, 
intelligence,  and  culture,  has  been  able  to  manipulate  its 
program  in  its  own  economic  interest  and  in  consequence 
has  been  obliged  to  face  the  waxing  antagonism  of  the 
working  masses.  The  new  problem  was  everywhere  met, 
after  the  first  unreasoning  opposition  had  died  down, 
with  protective  and  ameliorative  legislation,  but  two  Eu- 
ropean countries,  Germany  and  Great  Britain,  have  gone 
farther  than  palliatives  and  have  taken  the  theoretic  stand 
that  the  modern  state  must  entertain  an  economic  ideal. 
They  have  already  by  virtue  of  their  Insurance  Laws 


40  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

not  insubstantially  increased  the  share  of  the  laborer  in  the 
total  product  of  industry.  That  is  where  the  matter 
rests.  It  would  be  absurd  to  declare  categorically  what 
will  take  place  in  the  future,  but  it  may  be  asserted  that  a 
larger  and  not  a  smaller  place  will  be  assigned  henceforth 
to  the  question  of  the  workers  and  that  its  solution  must 
be  preceded  by  such  a  change  in  the  traditional  view  of 
the  function  of  the  state  as  is  indicated  by  the  newer 
legislation  of  Germany  and  Great  Britain.  Specifically 
as  to  democracy  it  seems  clear  that  it  has  been  carried 
about  as  far  as  a  triumphant  middle  class  can  carry  it; 
if  we  are  to  have  a  democracy  chiefly  concerned  with 
economic  equality — -and  innumerable  signs  seem  to  indicate 
that  such  is  the  coming  historical  movement — the  rule  of 
the  middle  class  will  have  to  be  subjected  to  a  gradual 
change.  By  the  absorption  of  the  middle  class  into  the 
masses?  By  the  ascendancy  of  an  all-powerful  and  di- 
rective state?  By  the  triumph  of  the  Socialist  program? 
Let  a  bolder  man  than  the  present  writer  say.  In  any  case 
uncertain  nursery  steps  looking  forward  to  a  modification 
of  middle  class  rule  have  already  been  taken  by  all  the 
leading  industrial  countries,  and  many  symptoms  proclaim 
that  still  greater  things  are  in  the  wind. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  READINGS 


MORE'S  UTOPIA. 

THE   PLEA  OF   SIR   THOMAS   MORE,  MADE   IN    1516,    FOR  A 

COMMONWEALTH     BASED    ON     EQUALITY     OF 

POSSESSIONS. 

For  the  wise  man  did  easily  foresee,  this  to  be  the 
one  and  only  way  to  the  wealth  of  a  commonalty,  if 
equality  of  all  things  should  be  brought  in  and  stab- 
lished.  Which  I  think  is  not  possible  to  be  observed, 
where  every  man's  goods  be  proper  and  peculiar  to  him- 
self. For  where  man  under  certain  titles  and  pretences 
draweth  and  plucketh  to  himself  as  much  as  he  can,  so 
that  a  few  divide  among  themselves  all  the  whole  riches, 
be  there  never  so  much  abundance  and  store,  there  to 
the  residue  is  left  lack  and  poverty.  And  for  the  most 
part  it  chanceth,  that  this  latter  sort  is  more  worthy  to 
enjoy  that  state  of  wealth,  than  the  other  be:  because  the 
rich  man  be  covetous,  crafty  and  unprofitable.  On  the 
other  part  the  poor  be  lowly,  simple,  and  by  their  daily 
labour  more  profitable  to  the  commonwealth  than  to 
themselves.  Thus  I  do  fully  persuade  myself,  that  no 
equal  and  just  distribution  of  things  can  be  made,  nor 
that  perfect  wealth  shall  ever  be  among  men,  unless  this 
propriety  be  exiled  and  banished.  But  so  long  as  it  shall 
continue,  so  long  shall  remain  among  the  most  and  best 
part  of  men  the  heavy  and  inevitable  burden  of  poverty 
and  wretchedness.  Which,  as  I  grant  that  it  may  be 
somewhat  eased,  so  I  utterly  deny  that  it  can  wholly  be 
taken  away.  For  if  there  were  a  statute  made,  that  no 
man  should  possess  above  a  certain  measure  of  ground, 
and  that  no  man  should  have  in  his  stock  above  a  prescript 
and  appointed  sum  of  money:  if  it  were  by  certain  laws 
decreed,  that  neither  the  king  should  be  of  too  great 


42  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

power,  neither  the  people  too  haughty  and  wealthy,  and 
that  offices  should  not  be  obtained  by  inordinate  suit,  or 
by  bribes  and  gifts:  that  they  should  neither  be  bought 
nor  sold,  nor  that  it  should  be  needful  for  the  officers, 
to  be  at  any  cost  or  charge  in  their  offices:  for  so  occa- 
sion is  given  to  them  by  fraud  and  ravin  to  gather  up 
their  money  again,  and  by  reason  of  gifts  and  bribes 
the  offices  be  given  to  rich  men,  which  should  rather  have 
been  executed  of  wise  men:  by  such  laws  I  say,  like  as 
sick  bodies  that  be  desperate  and  past  cure,  be  wont  with 
continual  good  cherishing  to  be  kept  and  botched  up  for 
a  time,  so  these  evils  also  might  be  lightened  and  miti- 
gated. But  that  they  may  be  perfectly  cured,  and 
brought  to  a  good  and  upright  state,  it  is  not  to  be  hoped 
for,  whiles  every  man  is  master  of  his  own  to  himself. 
Yea,  and  while  you  go  about  to  do  your  cure  of  one 
part,  you  shall  make  bigger  the  sore  of  another  part,  so 
the  help  of  one  causeth  another's  harm :  forasmuch  as 
nothing  can  be  given  to  any  one,  unless  it  be  taken  from 
another. 

— More's  Utopia  (Camelot  Series),  pp.  112-13. 


SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS  43 

EXTRACTS   FROM  THE   DECLARATION   OF 

THE  RIGHTS  OF  MAN  AND  OF  THE 

CITIZEN. 

ISSUED    IN    THE    YEAR    1789,    AND    EMBODYING    THE    DE- 
MANDS  OF  THE  FRENCH   BOURGEOISIE. 

The  representatives  of  the  French  people,  organized  as 
a  National  Assembly,  believing  that  the  ignorance,  neg- 
lect, or  contempt  of  the  rights  of  man  are  the  sole  cause 
of  public  calamities  and  of  the  corruption  of  governments, 
have  determined  to  set  forth  in  a  solemn  declaration  the 
natural,  inalienable,  and  sacred  rights  of  man,  in  order 
that  this  declaration,  being  constantly  before  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  social  body,  shall  remind  them  continually  of 
their  rights  and  duties;  in  order  that  the  acts  of  the 
legislative  power,  as  well  as  those  of  the  executive  power, 
may  be  compared  at  any  moment  with  the  objects  and 
purposes  of  all  political  institutions  and  may  thus  be 
more  respected;  and,  lastly,  in  order  that  the  grievances 
of  the  citizens,  based  hereafter  upon  simple  and  incon- 
testable principles,  shall  tend  to  the  maintenance  of  the 
constitution  and  redound  to  the  happiness  of  all.  There- 
fore the  National  Assembly  recognizes  and  proclaims,  in 
the  presence  and  under  the  auspices  of  the  Supreme  Being, 
the  following  rights  of  man  and  of  the  citizen: 

ARTICLE  1.  Men  are  born  and  remain  free  and  equal 
in  rights.  Social  distinction  may  be  founded  only  upon 
the  general  good. 

2.  The  aim  of  all  political  association  is  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  natural  and  imprescriptible  rights  of  man. 
These  rights  are  liberty,  property,  security,  and  resistance 
to  oppression. 


44  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

3.  The  principle  of  all  sovereignty  resides  essentially 
in  the  nation.     No  body  nor  individual  may  exercise  any 
authority  which  does  not  proceed  directly  from  the  nation. 

4.  Liberty  consists  in  the  freedom  to  do  everything 
which  injures  no  one  else;  hence  the  exercise  of  the  nat- 
ural rights  of  each  man  has  no  limits  except  those  which 
assure  to  the  other  members  of  the  society  the  enjoyment 
of  the  same  rights.    These  limits  can  only  be  determined 
by  law. 

5.  Law  can  only  prohibit  such  actions  as  are  hurtful 
to  society.     Nothing  may  be  prevented  which  is  not  for- 
bidden by  law,  and  no  one  may  be  forced  to  do  anything 
not  provided  for  by  law. 

6.  Law  is  the  expression  of  the  general  will.     Every 
citizen  has  a  right  to  participate  personally,  or  through 
his  representative,  in,  its  formation.     It  must  be  the  same 
for  all  whether  it  protects  or  punishes.     All  citizens,  be- 
ing equal  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  are  equally  eligible  to 
all  dignities  and  to  all  public  positions  and  occupations, 
according  to  their  abilities,  and  without  distinction  except 
that  of  their  virtues  and  talents. 

9.  As  all  persons  are  held  innocent  until  they  shall 
have  been  declared  guilty,  if  arrest  shall  be  deemed  in- 
dispensable,   all   harshness  not   essential   to  the   securing 
of  the  prisoner's  person  shall  be  severely  repressed  by  law. 

10.  No   one   shall   be   disquieted    on   account  of   his 
opinions,    including    his   religious    views,    provided    their 
manifestation  does  not  disturb  the  public  order  established 
by  law. 

11.  The  free  communication  of  ideas  and  opinions  is 
one  of  the  most  precious  of  the  rights  of  man.     Every 
citizen   may,    accordingly,   speak,  write,   and   print  with 


SUPPLEMENTARY    READINGS  45 

freedom,  but  shall  be  responsible  for  such  abuses  of  this 
freedom  as  shall  be  defined  by  law. 

14.  All  the  citizens  have  a  right  to  decide,  either  per- 
sonally or  by  their  representatives,  as  to  the  necessity  of 
the  public  contribution;  to  grant  this  freely;  to  know  to 
what  uses  it  is  put;  and  to  fix  the  proportion,  the  mode 
of  assessment  and  of  collection  and  duration  of  the  taxes. 

15.  Society  has  the  right  to  require  of  every  public 
agent  an  account  of  his  administration. 

— Buchez  et  Roux,  Histoire  Parlementaire,  1 1 :404. 


KARL   MARX    ON    THE    INTER-ACTION    OF 

INVENTIONS  AND  OF  INDUSTRIAL 

GROUPS. 

A  radical  change  in  the  mode  of  production  in  one 
sphere  of  industry  involves  a  similar  change  in  other 
spheres.  This  happens  at  first  in  such  branches  of  in- 
dustry as  are  connected  together  by  being  distinct  steps 
in  the  manufacture  of  a  single  article,  cloth  for  instance, 
and  yet  are  separated  by  the  division  of  labor  in  such  a 
way  that  at  each  step  an  independent  commodity  is  pro- 
duced. Thus  spinning  by  machinery  made  weaving  by 
machinery  a  necessity,  and  both  together  made  impera- 
tive the  mechanical  and  chemical  revolution  that  took 
place  in  bleaching,  printing,  and  dyeing.  So  too,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  revolution  in  cotton  spinning  called  forth 
the  invention  of  the  gin  for  separating  the  seeds  from  the 
cotton  fiber;  it  was  only  by  means  of  this  invention  that 
the  production  of  cotton  became  possible  on  the  enor- 
mous scale  at  present  required. 


46  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

But  more  especially,  the  revolution  in  the  modes  of 
production  of  industry  and  agriculture  made  necessary  a 
revolution  in  the  means  of  communication  and  of  trans- 
portation. These,  in  the  form  in  which  they  have  been 
handed  down  from  the  earlier  period,  became  unbearable 
trammels  on  modern  industry,  with  its  feverish  haste  of 
production,  its  enormous  extent,  its  constant  flinging  of 
capital  and  labor  from  one  sphere  of  production  into 
another,  and  its  newly  established  connections  with  the 
markets  of  the  whole  world.  Hence,  apart  from  the 
radical  changes  introduced  in  the  construction  of  sailing 
vessels,  the  means  of  communication  and  transportation 
became  gradually  adapted  to  the  modes  of  production  of 
mechanical  industry  by  the  creation  of  a  system  of  river 
steamers,  railways,  ocean  steamers,  and  telegraphs.  But 
the  huge  masses  of  iron  that  had  now  to  be  forged,  to  be 
welded,  to  be  cut,  to  be  bored,  and  to  be  shaped,  de- 
manded, on  their  part,  monster  machines,  for  the  con- 
struction of  which  the  methods  of  the  manufacturing 
period  were  utterly  inadequate. 

Modern  industry  had  therefore  itself  to  take  in  hand 
the  machine,  its  characteristic  instrument  of  production, 
and  to  construct  machines  by  machines.  It  was  not  till 
it  did  this,  that  it  built  up  for  itself  a  fitting  technical 
foundation  and  stood  on  its  own  feet.  Machinery,  simul- 
taneously with  the  increasing  use  of  it,  in  the  first  decades 
of  this  century,  appropriated  by  degrees  the  fabrication 
of  machines  proper.  But  it  was  only  during  the  decade 
preceding  1866  that  the  construction  of  railways  and 
ocean  steamers  on  a  stupendous  scale  called  into  exist- 
ence the  cyclopean  machines  now  employed  in  the  con- 
struction of  "prime  movers,"  or  motors. 

Thus  when  we  fix  our  attention  on  the  machinery  em- 
ployed in  the  construction  of  machines,  we  find  the  man- 


SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS  47 

ual  implements  reappearing,  but  on  a  grand  scale.  For 
instance,  the  cutting  part  of  the  boring  machine  is  an 
immense  drill  driven  by  a  steam  engine;  without  this 
machine,  the  cylinders  of  large  steam  engines  and  of  hy- 
draulic presses  could  not  be  made.  The  mechanical 
lathe  is  only  a  gigantic  reproduction  of  the  ordinary  foot 
lathe;  the  planing  machine,  an  iron  carpenter,  that  works 
on  iron  with  the  same  tools  that  the  human  carpenter 
employs  on  wood;  the  instrument  that,  on  the  London 
wharves,  cuts  the  veneers,  is  a  gigantic  razor;  the  tool 
of  the  shearing  machine,  which  shears  iron  as  easily  as  a 
tailor's  scissors  cut  cloth,  is  a  monster  pair  of  scissors; 
and  the  steam  hammer  works  with  an  ordinary  hammer 
head,  but  of  such  a  weight  that  not  even  the  god  Thor 
himself  could  wield  it. 

— Robinson  and  Beard,  Readings  in  Modern  European 
History,  2 :56  f . 


48  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

FROM    A    PARLIAMENTARY    REPORT     ON 
CHILD  LABOR. 

SHOWING    THE    INHUMAN    CONSEQUENCES    OF    THE     IN- 
DUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. 

When  the  Industrial  Revolution  brought  the  great  fac- 
tories into  England,  thousands  of  little  boys  and  girls, 
sometimes  not  more  than  five  or  six  years  old,  were  em- 
ployed in  tending  the  machines.  Their  wages  were  often 
merely  a  pittance,  and  their  hours  of  work  long  enough 
to  have  worn  out  even  strong  adults.  Even  before  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  attention  of  philan- 
thropists was  drawn  to  the  miserable  condition  of  mill 
workers,  and  reformers  began  to  urge  upon  Parliament 
the  necessity  of  making  special  provisions  to  safeguard 
the  health  and  welfare  of  the  children.  In  order  to  learn 
the  real  state  of  affairs,  Parliament  from  time  to  time 
appointed  commissioners,  whose  voluminous  reports  re- 
vealed the  actual  condition  of  the  little  workers  in  the 
mills. 

Here  are  extracts  from  a  report  of  the  year  1842: 
Charles  Harris,  a  boy  working  in  the  carding  room  of 
Mr.   Oldacress  mill  for  spinning  worsted  yarn,  testified 
as  follows: 

I  am  twelve  years  old.  I  have  been  in  the  mill  twelve 
months.  I  attend  to  a  drawing  machine.  We  begin  at 
six  o'clock  and  stop  at  half  past  seven.  We  don't  stop 
work  for  breakfast.  We  do  sometimes.  This  week  we 
have  not.  Nothing  has  been  said  to  me  by  Mr.  Oldacres 
or  the  overlooker,  or  anybody  else,  about  having  any 
questions  asked  me.  I  am  sure  of  that.  The  engine 
always  stops  for  dinner.  It  works  at  tea  time  in  the  hot 
weather;  and  then  we  give  over  at  half  past  seven  instead 


SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS  49 

of  eight,  which  is  the  general  time.  We  have  generally 
about  twelve  hours  and  a  half  of  it.  On  Saturday  we 
begin  at  six  and  give  over  at  four.  I  get  2s  6d.  a  week. 
I  have  a  father  and  mother,  and  give  them  what  I  earn. 
I  have  worked  overhours  for  two  or  three  weeks  to- 
gether about  a  fortnight  since.  All  the  difference  was, 
we  worked  breakfast  time  and  tea  time,  and  did  not  go 
away  till  eight.  We  are  paid  for  such  overhours  at  the 
rate  of  2d.  for  three  hours.  I  have  always  that  for  my- 
self. 

What  do  you  do  with  it? 

I  save  it  for  clothes  sometimes.  I  put  it  into  a  money 
club  for  clothes.  I  have  worked  nine  hours  over  in  one 
week.  I  got  for  that  sY^d.  I  gave  it  my  mother,  and 
she  made  it  up  to  6d.  and  put  it  into  the  money  club.  She 
always  puts  by  6d.  a  week  from  my  wages  for  that. 

Then  your  mother  gets  what  you  earn  by  the  over- 
hours,  doesn't  she? 

No;  I  gets  it  for  myself. 

Do  you  work  overhours  or  not,  just  as  you  like? 

No;  them  as  works  must  work. 

If  overhours  are  put  on  next  week,  shall  you  be  glad  or 
sorry? 

It  won't  signify.  I  shall  be,  neither  glad  nor  sorry. 
Sometimes  mother  gives  me  a  halfpenny  to  spend. 

What  do  you  do  with  it  ? 

I  saves  it  to  buy  shoes.  Have  never  saved  above  a 
shilling  for  that ;  mother  put  more  to  it,  and  bought  me  a 
pair. 

Don't  you  play  sometimes  after  work's  over? 

Yes,  sometimes. 

Well,  are  you  not  sorry  to  lose  that? 


50  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL.  SCIENCE 

No,  I  don't  mind  about  it.  I  am  quite  sure  I  don't. 
I  am  sometimes  tired  when  I  have  been  at  work  long 
hours.  I  am  not  tired  now;  I  have  been  at  work  all 
day  except  dinner;  it  is  now  five  o'clock.  I  am  sure  I 
had  rather  work  as  I  do  than  lose  any  of  my  wages.  I 
go  to  school  of  a  Sunday  sometimes.  I  went  first  about 
a  month  ago.  I  have  been  every  Sunday  since.  I  can 
only  read  in  the  alphabet  yet.  I  mean  to  go  regular. 
There  is  no  reason  why  I  should  not.  I  wants  to  be  a 
scholar. 

The  father  of  two  children  in  a  mill  at  Lenton  de- 
posed as  follows: 

My  two  sons  (the  one  ten,  the  other  thirteen)  work 
at  Milnes's  factory  at  Lenton.  They  go  at  half  past 
five  in  the  morning;  don't  stop  at  breakfast  or  tea,  time. 
They  stop  at  dinner  half  an  hour.  Come  home  at  a 
quarter  before  ten.  They  used  to  work  till  ten,  sometimes 
eleven,  sometimes  twelve.  They  earn  between  them 
6s.  2d.  per  week.  One  of  them,  the  eldest,  worked  at 
Wilson's  for  two  years,  at  2s.  ^d.  per  week.  He  left 
because  the  overlooker  beat  him  and  loosened  a  tooth 
for  him.  I  complained,  and  they  turned  him  away  for 
it.  They  have  been  gone  to  work  sixteen  hours  now; 
they  will  be  very  tired  when  they  come  home  at  half  past 
nine.  I  have  a  deal  of  trouble  to  get  'em  up  in  the 
morning.  I  have  been  obliged  to  beat  'em  with  a  strap 
in  their  shirts,  and  to  pinch  'em,  in  order  to  get  them 
well  awake.  It  made  me  cry  to  be  obliged  to  do  it. 

Did  you  make  them  cry? 

Yes,  sometimes.  They  will  be  home  soon,  very  tired; 
and  you  will  see  them. 

1  (i.  e.,  the  government  inspector)  preferred  walking 
towards  the  factory  to  meet  them.  I  saw  the  youngest 


SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS  61 

only,  and  asked  him  a  few  questions.  He  said,  "I'm  sure 
I  shan't  stop  to  talk  to  you;  I  want  to  go  home  and  get 
to  bed;  I  must  be  up  at  half  past  five  again  to-morrow 
morning." 

— Robinson  and  Beard,  Readings  in  Modern  European 
History,  2:281  fE. 


LOUIS  BLANC'S  LABOR  PROGRAM. 

DEFINING   ONE    OF    THE    EARLIEST    SOCIALIST    PROPOSALS. 

ARTICLE  1.  A  ministry  of  progress  should  be  created, 
whose  business  would  be  to  consummate  our  social  revo- 
lution, and  gradually,  peaceably,  without  injury  to  any 
one,  bring  about  the  abolition  of  poverty. 

2.  To  effect  this  end,  the  ministry  of  progress  should 
be  directed:  first,  to  buy  up  with  the  public  revenues  all 
mines  and   railways;  second,  to  transform  the   Bank  of 
France  into  a  national  bank ;  third,  to  have  but  one  grand 
national  insurance  ofKce,  to  the  great  advantage  of  indi- 
viduals and  of  the  government;  fourth,  to  establish,  under 
the   direction  of   responsible   officers,  large   public  ware- 
houses, where  producers  and  manufacturers  could  deposit 
their  merchandise  and  provisions,   for  which  they  would 
have  negotiable  receipts  of  an  estimated  and  determinate 
value,  which  should  serve  the  purpose  of  paper  money 
and  be  guaranteed  to  the  full  amount  by  the  merchan- 
dise thus  deposited;   fifth,   to   open  shops   which   would 
supply  the  place  of  our  retail  dealers,  just  as  the  public 
warehouses   or  magazines  would   take   the  place  of  the 
present  system  of  wholesale  business. 

3.  The  ministry  of  progress  would   make  out  their 
special  budget,  the  "labor  budget,"  comprising  the  profits 


52  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

arising  from  the  warehouse  dues,  railways,  mines,  insur- 
ance, and  the  bank;  all  of  which  are  now  employed  in 
private  speculation,  but  would,  in .  the  new  system,  be 
appropriated  by  the  government. 

4.  The   interest  and   the  gradual  repayments  on  the 
sums  borrowed   for  the  above-mentioned  operations  hav- 
ing been  deducted  from  the  labor  budget,  the  rest  would 
be  employed:  first,  in  establishing  associations  of  work- 
men ;  second,  in  founding  agricultural  colonies. 

5.  In  order  to  be  entitled  to  the  assistance  of  the  gov- 
ernment,   every    association    must   be   established   on   the 
principles  of  community  of  interests,  so  as  to  be  able  to 
acquire    in    its    progressive    development  an  inalienable, 
ever-increasing,  common  capital,  which  is  the  only  means 
of  destroying  all  kinds  of  usury,  and  of  preventing  capital 
from  continuing  an  instrument  of  tyranny,  the  possession 
of  the  implements  of  labor  a  privilege,  money  dealing  a 
trade,  happiness  an  exception,  and  idleness  a  right. 

6.  Consequently  every  association  that  would  desire  gov- 
ernment aid   must  embody   the   following  regulations   in 
its  constitution.     After  deducting  wages,  interest  of  cap- 
ital, and  expenses  of  management,  the  profits  should  be 
this,  divided  into  four  parts:    (1)  one-quarter  to  pay  off 
the  capital  borrowed  by  the  government  for  the  associa- 
tion;   (2)   one-quarter  to  be  appropriated  as  a  fund  for 
the  assistance   of  the  aged,   the  sick,   the  disabled,   etc.; 
(3)  one-quarter  to  be  divided  as  profits  among  the  mem- 
bers in  a  manner  to  be  stated  below;    (4)  the  remaining 
quarter  to  form  a  reserve  fund,  the  object  of  which  will 
be  explained  further  on.     Such  would  be  the  constitution 
of  a  single  association. 

— Robinson  and   Beard,  Readings  in  Modern  European 
History,  2:76. 


SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS  53 

EXTRACTS  FROM  THE  COMMUNIST  MANI- 
FESTO OF  MARX  AND  ENGELS  (1848). 

BASIS  OF  ALL  LATER  SOCIALISM. 

The  history  of  all  hitherto  existing  society  is  the  his- 
tory of  class  struggles.  In  the  earlier  epochs  we  find 
almost  everywhere  a  complicated  organization  of  society 
into  various  orders.  In  ancient  Rome  we  have  patricians, 
knights,  plebeians,  slaves;  in  the  Middle  Ages,  feudal 
lords,  vassals,  guild  masters,  journeymen,  apprentices, 
serfs. 

The  modern  bourgeois  society,  which  has  sprung  from 
the  ruins  of  feudal  society,  has  not  done  away  with  class 
antagonism.  It  has  only  established  new  classes,  new  con- 
ditions of  oppression,  new  forms  of  struggle  in  place  of 
the  old  ones.  Our  epoch,  the  epoch  of  the  burgeois, 
possesses,  however,  this  distinctive  feature:  it  has  sim- 
plified the  class  antagonism.  Society  as  a  whole  is  more 
and  more  splitting  up  into  two  great  hostile  camps,  into 
two  great  classes  directly  facing  each  other, — Bourgeoisie 
and  Proletariat. 

The  discovery  of  America,  the  rounding  of  the  Cape, 
opened  up  fresh  fields  for  the  rising  bouregoisie.  The 
East  Indian  and  Chinese  markets,  the  colonization  of 
America,  gave  to  commerce,  navigation,  and  industry 
an  impulse  never  before  known.  The  feudal  system  of 
industry,  under  which  industrial  production  was  monopo- 
lized by  close  guilds,  now  no  longer  sufficed  for  the 
growing  demands  of  the  new  markets.  The  manufac- 
turing system  (on  a  small  scale)  took  its  place.  The 
guild  masters  were  pushed  to  one  side  by  the  manufac- 
turing middle  class;  division  of  labor  between  the  differ- 


54  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

ent  corporate  guilds  vanished  in  the  face  of  the  division 
of  labor  in  each  single  workshop. 

Meantime  the  markets  kept  ever  growing,  the  demand 
ever  increasing.  Production  by  hand  no  longer  sufficed. 
Thereupon  steam  and  machinery  revolutionized  indus- 
trial production.  The  place  of  handwork  was  taken  by 
that  giant,  Modern  Industry;  the  place  of  the  industrial 
middle  class,  by  industrial  millionaires,  the  leaders  of 
whole  industrial  armies, — the  modern  bourgeoisie.  We 
see,  therefore,  how  the  modern  bourgeoisie  is  itself  the 
product  of  a  long  course  of  development,  of  a  series  of 
revolutions  in  the  modes  of  production  and  of  exchange. 

The  bourgeoisie,  wherever  it  has  got  the  upper  hand, 
has  put  an  end  to  all  feudal,  patriarchal,  idyllic  rela- 
tions. It  has  pitilessly  torn  asunder  the  motley  feudal 
ties  that  bound  man  to  his  "natural  superiors,"  and  has 
left  no  other  tie  between  man  and  man  than  naked  self- 
interest,  callous  "cash  payment."  It  has  drowned  the 
heavenly  ecstasies  of  religion,  of  chivalrous  enthusiasm, 
of  philistine  sentimentalism,  in  the  icy  water  of  selfish 
business  calculation.  The  bourgeoisie  has  stripped  of  its 
halo  every  occupation  hitherto  honored  and  looked  up  to 
with  reverent  awe.  It  has  converted  the  physician,  the 
lawyer,  the  priest,  the  poet,  the  man  of  science,  into  its 
paid  wage  laborers. 

Constant  revolutionizing  of  production,  uninterrupted 
disturbance  of  all  social  conditions,  everlasting  uncer- 
tainty and  agitation,  distinguish  the  bourgeois  epoch  from 
all  earlier  periods.  All  fixed  relations,  with  their  ancient 
and  venerable  prejudices  and  opinions,  are  swept  away; 
all  new-formed  ones  become  antiquated  before  they  can 
solidify.  All  that  is  holy  is  profaned,  and  man  is  at  last 
compelled  to  face  with  clear  vision  and  without  illusion 


SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS  55 

his  real  conditions  of  life  and  his  relations  with  his 
fellow-men. 

The  bourgeoisie,  by  the  rapid  spread  of  all  instru- 
ments of  production,  by  the  immensely  facilitated  means 
of  communication,  draws  even  the  most  barbarous  peoples 
into  civilization.  The  low  prices  of  its  commodities  are 
the  heavy  artillery  with  which  it  batters  down  all  Chinese 
walls,  with  which  it  softens  the  barbarians'  intensely  obsti- 
nate hatred  of  foreigners.  It  compels  all  nations,  on 
pain  of  extinction,  to  adopt  the  bourgeois  mode  of  produc- 
tion; it  forces  them  to  introduce  what  it  calls  "civiliza- 
tion" into  their  midst,  i.  e.,  to  become  bourgeois  them- 
selves. In  one  word,  it  creates  a  world  after  its  own 
image. 

The  bourgeoisie  has  subjected  the  country  to  the  rule 
of  the  towns.  It  has  created  enormous  cities,  has  greatly 
increased  the  urban  population  as  compared  with  the  rural, 
and  has  thus  rescued  a  considerable  part  of  the  popula- 
tion from  the  stupidity  of  rural  life.  Just  as  it  has  made 
the  country  dependent  on  the  towns,  so  it  has  made  bar- 
barian and  semibarbarian  countries  dependent  on  the  civ- 
ilized ones,  nations  of  peasants  on  nations  of  bourgeoisie, 
the  East  on  the  West. 

The  bourgeoisie,  during  its  rule  of  scarce  one  hundred 
years,  has  created  more  colossal  productive  forces  than 
have  all  preceding  generations  together.  Subjection  of 
Nature's  forces  to  man,  machinery,  the  application  of 
chemistry  to  industry  and  agriculture,  steam  navigation, 
railways,  electric  telegraphs,  clearing1  of  whole  continents 
for  cultivation, — what  earlier  century  has  even  a  presenti- 
ment that  such  productive  forces  slumbered  in  the  lap  of 
social  labor? 

The  arms  with  which  the  bourgeoisie  felled  feudalism 
to  the  ground  are  now  turned  against  the  bourgeoisie 


5«  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

itself.  It  has  not  only  forged  the  weapons  for  self- 
destruction  ;  it  has  also  called  into  existence  the  men  who 
are  to  wield  those  weapons, — the  modern  working  class, — 
the  proletarians.  In  proportion  as  the  bourgeoisie,  i.  e. 
capital,  is  developed,  in  the  same  proportion  is  the  prole- 
tariat, i.  e.  the  modern  working  class,  developed, — a  class 
of  laborers,  who  live  only  so  long  as  they  find  work,  and 
who  find  work  only  so  long  as  their  labor  increases  cap- 
ital. These  laborers,  who  must  sell  themselves,  are  a 
commodity,  like  every  other  article  of  commerce,  and  are 
consequently  exposed  to  all  the  vicissitudes  of  competi- 
tion, to  all  the  fluctuations  of  the  market. 

Owing  to  the  extensive  use  of  machinery  and  to  divi- 
sion of  labor,  the  work  of  the  proletarians  has  lost  all 
individual  character,  and  consequently,  all  charm  for  the 
workman.  He  becomes  an  appendage  of  the  machine, 
and  it  is  only  the  most  simple,  most  monotonous,  and  most 
easily  acquired  knack  that  is  required  of  him. 

Modern  industry  hasy  converted  the  little  workshop  of 
the  patriarchal  master  into  the  great  factory  of  the  in- 
dustrial capitalist.  Masses  of  laborers,  crowded  into  the 
factory,  are  organized  like  soldiers.  Not  only  are  they 
slaves  of  the  bourgeois  class,  and  of  the  bourgeois  State; 
they  are  daily  and  hourly  enslaved  by  the  machine,  by  the 
overseer,  and,  above  all,  by  the  individual  bourgeois  manu- 
facturer himself.  The  less  skill  and  exertion  of  strength 
is  implied  in  manual  labor,  in  other  words,  the  more 
modern  industry  becomes  developed,  the  more  is  the  labor 
of  men  superseded  by  that  of  women. 


The  essential  condition  for  the  existence  and  sway  of 
the  bourgeois  class  is  the  creation  and  increase  of  cap- 
ital; the  condition  for  capital  is  wage  labor.  Wage 


SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS  87 

labor  rests  exclusively  on  competition  between  the  labor- 
ers. The  advance  of  industry,  whose  involuntary  pro- 
moter is  the  bourgeoisie,  replaces  the  isolation  of  the 
laborers,  due  to  competition,  by  their  revolutionary  com- 
bination, due  to  association.  The  development  of  mod- 
ern industry,  therefore,  cuts  from  under  its  feet  the  very 
foundation  of  capitalist  production  and  distribution  of 
wealth.  What  the  bourgeoisie  therefore  produces,  above 
all,  are  its  own  gravediggers.  Its  fall  and  the  victory  of 
the  proletariat  are  inevitable. 

— Marx  and  Engels,   The  Communist  Manifesto,  New 
York,  1901,  10  if. 


A  FRENCHMAN'S   ATTEMPT  TO   ANALYZE 

THE  LEADING  POLITICAL  PARTIES   IN 

NINETEENTH  CENTURY  EUROPE. 

1.  The  Absolutist  Conservative  party,  formed  by  the 

high  officials  and  landed  aristocracy,  desired  to  maintain 
absolute  government,  the  authority  of  the  Church,  and 
the  censorship  of  the  press;  it  controlled  all  the  central, 
eastern,  and  southern  States  of  Europe.  It  no  longer  ex- 
isted in  England,  for  the  former  Absolutist  party,  the 
Jacobites,  had  not  survived  the  century  of  political  lib- 
erty. 

2.  The  Liberal  Conservative,  or  Constitutional  party, 
sometimes  called  the  Tory,  or  Right  Center,  composed 
of  the  upper  middle   class  and   the  liberal  officeholders, 
demanded  that  the  parliament  should  control  the  admin- 
istration of  the  government,  particularly  in  financial  mat- 
ters.    Its  ideal  was  personal   government  by  sovereign, 


68  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL.  SCIENCE 

with  a  parliament  of  two  houses,  one  aristocratic,  the 
other  elective.  It  believed  that  the  electoral  body  should 
be  limited  by  a  considerable  property  qualification,  and 
that  the  parliament  should  vote  the  annual  budget  and 
leave  the  prince  free  in  the  choice  of  his  ministers  and 
in  the  direction  of  general  policy.  There  should  be  no 
censorship  of  the  press,  but  liberty  should  be  restricted 
to  the  wealthy  classes;  the  nation's  right  should  be  guar- 
anteed by  a  constitution.  /This  party  was  in  power  in 
the  States  which  had  constitutions;  in  the  absolute  mon- 
archies it  demanded  a  constitution,  a  representative  assem- 
bly, and  the  abolition  of  censorship. 

3.  The  Parliamentary  Liberal  party,  sometimes1  called 
the  Whig,  or  Left  Center,   recruited   from   the   middle 
class,   demanded  not  only  control  by  the  elective  assem- 
bly but  its  supremacy  over  the  sovereign,  his  ministers, 
and  the  aristocratic  chamber.     Its  ideal  was  the  parlia- 
mentary  system,    a  ministry   chosen    from   the   party   in 
majority  in  the  lower  house,   governing  in  the  prince's 
name,  but  according  to  the  will  of  the  elected  representa- 
tives of  the  nation.     It  demanded   a  constitution  which 
recognized  the  superior  rights  or  sovereignty  of  the  peo- 
ple, political  liberties  (such  as  liberty  of  the  press,  hold- 
ing public  meetings,  and   forming  associations),  and   ab- 
solute religious  liberty     ...      It  would  admit  only 
property  owners  to  vote,  but  tended  to  lower  the  quali- 
fications   for   the    franchise  in    order   to  include   in    the 
voting  body  of  the  lower  middle  class. 

4.  The  Democratic,  or  Radical  party,  formed  by  stu- 
dents, workingmen,  writers,  and  lawyers,  demanded,  ac- 
cording  to   the    motto   of    the    French    Revolution,    the 
sovereignty  and  political  equality  of  the  people.    It  added 
to  the  demands  of  the  Parliamentary  party  universal  suf- 


SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS  69 

frage,  remuneration  of  representatives,  abolition  of  all  po- 
litical privileges  of  the  wealthy  classes,  and  separation  of 
Church  and  State.  Its  ideal  was  a  purely  representative, 
democratic,  and  preferably  republican  government  like 
that  of  the  French  Convention,  or  even  a  direct  govern- 
ment by  the  people,  in  which  they  should  themselves 
make  the  constitution.  In  1815  this  party,  so  far  from 
being  in  power  in  any  country,  had  not  even  the  right  to 
formulate  its  programme  publicly,  except  in  England, 
Sweden,  and  Norway. 

The  two  extreme  parties,  Absolutist  and  Democratic, 
held  diametrically  opposite  conceptions  of  government  and 
society.  The  Absolutists  wanted  a  society  based  on  hered- 
itary inequality.  .  .  .  They  also  demanded  an  es- 
tablished religion.  The  Democrats  admitted  neither  po- 
litical, hereditary  nor  ecclesiastical  authority. 
— Seignobos,  A  Political  History  of  Europe,  Holt  &  Co., 
New  York,  p.  856  ff. 


A  DESCRIPTION  OF  THE  GERMAN  INSUR- 
ANCE LAWS,  PASSED  BETWEEN 
1883  AND  1890. 

The  minimum  of  relief  in  case  of  sickness  entitles  the 
beneficiary  to  free  medical  treatment  and  medicine  for  26 
weeks;  and  in  case  of  incapacity  for  work,  financial  as- 
sistance to  the  extent  of  one-half  of  the  average  daily 
wage,  or  to  free  hospital  nursing,  besides  one-half  of  the 
allowance  for  those  dependent  on  the  sick  person.  Fur- 
ther, it  entitles  sick  women  to  relief  for  six  months  after 
their  confinement;  and  in  case  of  death,  burial  money 
amounting  to  twenty  times  their  average  daily  wage. 


60  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

The  necessary  means  are  raised  by  weekly  contribu- 
tions (not  higher  than  four  per  cent  of  the  average  wage), 
two-thirds  of  which  is  borne  by  the  insured  and  one-third 
by  the  employer.  The  administration  is  carried  out 
through  sickness  clubs  organized  according  to  trades  or 
localities,  whose  presiding  officers  are  chosen  from  the 
insured  and  the  employers  according  to  the  ratio  of  the 
contributions.  The  insurance  against  sickness  embraces 
(inclusive  of  the  miners'  clubs)  about  ten  million  per- 
sons in  more  than  twenty  thousand  clubs,  and  involves  an 
annual  expenditure  of  about  200  million  marks. 

Insurance  against  accidents  replaces  the  old  law  of  Em- 
ployers' Liability  (its  many  defects  being  equally  harmful 
to  employer  and  employed)  by  a  legal  provision,  which 
also  insures  the  person  injured,  or  his  survivors,  in  cases 
of  casual  accidents,  or  such  as  have  occurred  through  the 
fault  of  his  co-workers,  or  through  his  own  carelessness. 
The  personal  liability  of  the  employer  is  thus  changed 
into  an  economical  charge  upon  the  entire  trade  con- 
cerned, which  is  apportioned  to  single  establishments  ac- 
cording to  the  measure  of  their  risk. 

The  minimum  indemnity  against  accidents  comprises: 
(1)  in  the  case  of  wounded  persons  (from  the  com- 
mencement of  the  fourteenth  week  after  the  accident, 
that  is  to  say,  as  a  supplement  to  the  sickness  insurance) 
the  expenses  of  medical  treatment,  and  a  payment  during 
the  period  of  incapacity  for  work  up  to  two-thirds  of  the 
annual  earnings,  or  free  nursing  in  an  institute  until 
medical  treatment  is  no  longer  necessary,  and  the  same 
allowance  to  those  dependent  on  the  injured  person  as 
in  case  of  death;  (2)  in  case  of  death,  funeral  money  to 
the  amount  of  the  fifteenth  part  of  annual  salary,  but  in 
any  case  not  less  than  fifty  marks,  and  for  those  depend- 


SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS  61 

ent  on  the  deceased  an  allowance  amounting  to  60  per 
cent  of  the  annual  wage  for  widow  and  children,  and  to 
20  per  cent  of  same  for  necessitous  parents.  Up  to  the 
end  of  1903  more  than  1,000,000,000  marks  were  paid  in 
indemnities  for  accidents. 

Insurance  against  disablement  and  old  age^  which  was 
introduced  on  the  first  of  January,  1891,  by  an  imperial 
law  (revised  in  1899),  completes  the  system  of  work- 
men's insurance.  The  administrators  of  the  insurance 
which'  includes  all  branches  of  trade,  are  territorial  in- 
surance institutions,  guaranteed  by  the  State,  whose  self- 
administration  is  shared  equally  by  the  employer  and  em- 
ployees. The  insurance  entitles  those  incapable  of  work 
to  pensions  without  regard  to  age,  and  gives  old-age  pen- 
sions to  septuagenarians  regardless  of  working  ability. 
Further  it  assures  return  of  subscriptions  paid  by  insured 
women  who  marry  before  receiving  a  pension,  to  widows 
or  orphans  of  those  insured  persons  who  die  before  re- 
ceiving an  allowance,  and  to  those  insured  who  are  dis- 
abled through  accidents,  but  who  do  not  receive  a  dis- 
ablement allowance  because  of  their  higher  accident- 
insurance  allowance. 

The  funds  necessary  for  this  insurance  are  raised 
through  a  yearly  contribution  from  the  government  of 
fifty  marks  for  each  pension,  together  with  weekly  con- 
tributions to  an  equal  amount  from  employer  and  em- 
ployed. The  amount  of  the  same  for  a  definite  period  is 
so  estimated  in  advance  that  the  capital  value  of  the  pen- 
sions which  the  insurance  institution  must  bear  is  cov- 
ered, as  well  as  the  reimbursements  of  contributions  and 
the  other  expenses  of  insurance. 

The  disablement-insurance  scheme  comprises  about  13.5 
million  persons  insured,  or  almost  the  whole  of  the  work- 
ing classes. 


62  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

To  the  initiative  of  imperial  social  policy  the  blessing  is 
therefore  due  that  in  Germany  nearly  all  workmen  are 
insured  in  case  of  sickness,  accident,  and  disablement. 
Every  day  1,250,000  marks  are  spent  for  this  branch  of 
workman's  protection  alone.  In  countries  without  com- 
pulsory insurance  scarcely  one-tenth  of  the  workmen  en- 
joy a  similar  protection,  and  this,  moreover,  falls  con- 
siderably short  of  the  German  workman's  insurance  in 
certainty  and  scope. 

In  one  year  over  five  million  persons  in  need  of  help 
received  about  370,000,000  marks;  during  the  whole  pe- 
riod of  seventeen  years  (1885-1901)  50,000,000  persons 
in  round  numbers  (sick  and  injured  persons,  the  incapaci- 
tated and  their  families)  received  indemnities  amounting 
to  3,000,000,000  marks  is  a  result  of  the  legislation  for 
the  insurance  of  workmen,  although  the  most  far-reaching 
clauses  of  the  law  (insurance  against  disablement)  only 
came  into  force  on  January  1,  1891.  The  workmen 
have  only  paid  the  smaller  part  of  the  contribution,  and 
have  already  received  about  1,000,000,000  marks  more  in 
compensation  than  their  contributions  amount  to. 

The  significance  of  this  insurance  for  German  work- 
men extends  far  beyond  a  simple  financial  one,  for  it  has 
become  a  social-political  school  for  the  whole  nation.  The 
importance  of  German  workmen's  insurance  towers  far 
above  its  financial  aspect.  Through  the  mutual  partici- 
pation of  the  employer  and  employee  in  the  administra- 
tion and  payment  of  contributions,  the  workman  is  him- 
self daily  reminded  of  the  moral  duty  of  making  provision 
for  the  future  from  his  own  resources,  the  employers 
of  their  social  duties  to  their  employees,  and  both  parties 
of  their  common  interest  in  their  calling.  Thereby  social 
reconciliation  is  effected  where  otherwise  special  organi- 
zations would  array  themselves  against  each  other  as  an- 


SUPPLEMENTARY    READINGS  63 

tagonists.  It  is  of  great  importance,  moreover,  that  the 
cure  of  sick  and  disabled  workmen  is  more  rapidly  ef- 
fected through  the  erection  of  special  institutions.  Owing 
to  the  success  reached  through  these  measures,  public 
sanitation  has  been  directed  into  entirely  new  channels. 
Above  everything  else,  the  co-operation  of  these  organiza- 
tions with  those  of  voluntary  chanty,  especially  with  the 
Red  Cross  Society  and  the  National  Woman's  Club,  has 
made  it  possible  for  even  the  smallest  and  poorest  coun- 
try parish  to  systematically  cure  the  sick,  and  to  under- 
take an  organized  campaign  against  that  frightful  na- 
tional pestilence, — tuberculosis  of  the  lungs. 

Instead  of  smothering  the  free  initiative  of  self-helping 
bodies,  as  many  had  feared  workmen's  insurance  would 
do,  it  has,  on  the  contrary,  enabled  them  to  develop  to 
their  highest  powers. 

The  reserve  capital  of  1,500,000,000  marks  has  fur- 
nished the  means  for  solving  the  most  important  social 
economical  questions. 

Up  to  the  end  of  1902  over  400,000,000  marks  had 
been  expended  from  the  funds  of  disablement-insurance 
institutions  for  the  construction  of  workmen's  dwellings, 
sick  and  convalescent  houses,  sanatoriums,  public  hos- 
pitals, homes  for  traveling  workmen,  public  baths,  blind 
asylums,  kindergartens,  slaughterhouses,  systems  of  water- 
works, sewerage  and  draining  plants,  street  paving,  sav- 
ings banks,  co-operative  stores,  and  similar  institutions 
for  public  welfare,  as  well  as  for  the  payment  of  agricul- 
tural loans  (mortgages,  light  railroads,  land  and  road  im- 
provement, development  of  cattle  breeding,  etc. ) ,  all 
measures  the  final  aim  of  which  is  to  cause  the  masses  of 
the  people  to  participate  to  an  ever-increasing  degree  in 
the  advance  of  civilization. 


64  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

The   advantages  of   German  workmen's  insurance,  in 
distinction  to  other  systems,  is  that : 

1.  It  guarantees  the  support  required  by  necessitous 
persons  immediately,  and  as  a  well-earned  right: 

2.  It  gives  both  employer  and  employee  common  in- 
terests in  their  duties,  and  thereby  acts  in  a  way  as  an 
instrument  of  social  reconciliation; 

3.  It  awakens  a  feeling  of  social  duty  throughout  the 
nation;  and 

4.  It  strengthens  the  working  and  defensive  power  of 
the  nation. 

— Robinson  and  Beard,  Readings  in  European  History, 
2:189  ff. 


AN  ARGUMENT  AGAINST  SOCIALISM. 

BASED    ON     POLITICAL,     ECONOMIC,     AND    PSYCHOLOGICAL 
CONSIDERATIONS. 

The  pursuit  of  wealth  now  furnishes  the  outlet  for  the 
overmastering  ambition  of  many  persons.  In  the  new 
socialistic  state  the  desire  to  rise  in  the  world  would  have 
only  one  main  outlet,  namely  politics.  The  work  of  gov- 
erning the  country,  and  that  of  managing  its  industries, 
would  be  merged  in  one  great  official  body.  The  con- 
trast between  rulers  and  ruled  would  be  enormously 
heightened  by  this  concentration  of  power  in  the  hands  of 
the  rulers,  and  by  the  further  fact  that  the  ruled  would 
never  be  able,  by  means  of  wealth,  to  acquire  an  offset 
for  the  advantages  of  officeholding.  The  desire  for  pub- 
lic position  would  therefore  be  intensified  in  a  socialistic 
state. 


SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS  65 

There  would,  it  is  true,  be  some  prizes  to  be  gained, 
in  a  worthy  way,  by  other  kinds  of  service,  such  as  au- 
thorship, invention,  and  discovery;  but  the  prizes  which 
would  appeal  to  most  men  would  be  those  of  officehold- 
ing.  Is  it  in  reason  to  suppose  that  the  method  of  secur- 
ing the  offices  would  then  be  better  than  it  is  at  present. 
Would  a  man,  under  the  new  regime,  work  quietly  at 
his  task  in  the  shoe  shop,  the  bakery,  or  the  mine,  waiting 
for  the  office  to  which  he  aspires  to  seek  him  out,  or 
would  he  try  to  make  terms  with  other  men  for  mutual 
assistance  in  the  quest  of  office?  Would  "rings"  be  less 
general  than  they  are  now?  Could  there  fail  to  be 
bosses  and  political  machines?  Would  the  Tammanys 
of  the  new  order,  then,  be  an  improvement  on  the  Tam- 
manys of  the  old  order?  Without  making  any  dogmatic 
assertions,  we  may  say  that  there  would  certainly  have 
to  be  machines  of  some  sort  for  pushing  men  into  public 
offices,  and  that  these  would  have  very  sinister  possibili- 
ties. They  would  be  opposed  by  counter  machines,  made 
up  of  men  out  of  office  and  anxious  to  get  in. 

Furthermore,  very  nice  adjustments  would  have  to  be 
made  between  agriculture,  on  the  one  hand,  and  manu- 
facturers and  commerce  on  the  other;  and  further  adjust- 
ments would  have  to  be  made  between  the  different 
branches  of  each  form  of  business.  All  this  would  be 
done,  not  automatically  as  at  present,  by  the  action  of  de- 
mand and  supply  in  a  market,  but  by  the  voluntary  acts 
of  officials.  Here  is  the  field  in  which  the  wisdom  of 
officials  would  be  overtaxed.  They  might  manage  the 
mills  of  the  steel  trust,  but  it  would  trouble  them  to  say 
how  many  men  should  be  employed  in  that  business  and 
how  many  in  every  other,  and,  of  the  men  in  that  par- 
ticular branch,  how  many  should  work  in  Pittsburg  and 
how  many  in  the  mines  of  Michigan  and  Minnesota. 


66  STUDIES  IN  SOCIAL,  SCIENCE 

Another  grave  objection  to  socialism  is  the  check  that 
it  might  impose  on  technical  progress.  At  present  we  see 
a  bewildering  succession  of  inventions  transforming  the 
industries  of  the  world.  Machine  after  machine  appears 
in  rapid  succession,  each  displacing  its  predecessor,  work- 
ing for  a  time  and  giving  way  to  still  better  devices.  The 
power  of  man  over  nature  increases  with  amazing  rapid- 
ity. Even  in  the  relatively  simple  operations  of  agricul- 
ture, the  reaper,  the  thresher,  the  seeder  and  the  gang 
plow  enable  a  man  to-day  to  do  as  much  work  as  could  a 
score  of  men  ini  the  colonial  period  of  American  history. 
In  manufacturing  the  gain  is  greater;  and  in  transporta- 
tion it  is  indefinitely  greater.  The  progress  goes  on  with- 
out cessation,  since  the  thing  which  guarantees  it  is  the 
impulse  of  self-preservation.  An  employer  must  improve 
his  mechanism  if  his  rivals  do  so.  He  must  now  and  then 
get  ahead  of  his  rivals  if  he  is  to  make  any  profit.  Con- 
servatism which  adheres  to  the  old  is  self-destruction,  and 
a  certain  audacity  affords  the  nearest  approach  to  safety. 
From  this  it  comes  about,  first,  that  forward  movements 
are  made  daily  and  hourly  in  some  part  of  the  field ;  and, 
secondly  that  with  every  forward  movement  the  whole 
procession  must  move  on  to  catch  up  with  its  new  leader. 

Now,  it  is  possible  to  suppose  that  under  socialism  an 
altruistic  motive  may  lead  men  to  make  inventions  and 
discoveries.  They  may  work  for  the  good  of  humanity. 
The  desire  for  distinction  may  also  impel  them  to  such 
labors,  and  nonpecuniary  rewards  offered  by  the  State 
may  second  this  desire.  The  inventive  impulse  may  act 
even  where  no  reward  is  in  view.  Men  will  differ  greatly 
in  their  estimates  of  the  amount  of  progress  that  can  be 
gained  in  this  way;  but  the  thing  that  may  be  affirmed 
without  danger  of  denial  is,  that  the  competitive  race  ab- 
solutely compels  progress  at  a  rate  that  is  inspiringly 


SUPPLEMENTARY    READINGS  67 

rapid,  and  that  there  is  much  uncertainty  as  to  the 
amount  of  progress  that  would  be  secured  where  other 
motives  are  relied  on.  Officialdom  is  generally  unfavor- 
able to  the  adoption  of  improved  devices,  even  when  they 
are  presented;  its  boards  have  frequently  been  the  grave- 
yards of  inventions,  and  there  is  no  blinking  the  uncer- 
tainty as  to  whether  a  satisfactory  rate  of  improvement 
could  be  obtained  where  the  methods  of  production  should 
be  at  the  mercy  of  such  boards. 

— Professor  Clark,  quoted  by  Robinson  and  Beard,  Read- 
ings  in  Modern  European  History,  2 :497  &. 


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